Generic build instructions

[hughwilliams94]

Would it be possible to provide some straightforward build instructions for user that are not using Fedora or the Nix package manager. I tried to look through Travis config and run the cabal commands manually, but always encountered problems on Arch Linux.

[romanofski]

Hi @hughwilliams94 ,

I think that's a great idea. I think our HACKING document provides insights in how to setup a development environment, but is perhaps not as obvious as our README on the front of the repository?

[frasertweedale]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 04:24:54PM -0800, Roman Joost wrote: Hi @hughwilliams94 , I think that's a great idea. I think our HACKING document provides insights in how to setup a development environment, but is perhaps not as obvious as our README on the front of the repository?

Maybe a link to HACKING from README will suffice (plus whatever updates we might need to make to HACKING)?

[hughwilliams94]

I did have a look at the HACKING document, but again the instructions are for using Nix. I do agree it should probably be linked from the readme though.

[romanofski]

The thing with linking it from the README is that I think no one actually notices it. Reason that I believe that it's not obvious is because we already link to the HACKING document.

Perhaps the better place (I thought at least) would be below the repositories/instructions for Fedora/Nix ?

[romanofski]

@hughwilliams94 Btw. if there are any specific problems you're hitting when you've tried to build purebred I'd be interested to know about them too. Can't hurt to know what people try and what they're running into especially on platforms we don't use.

[romanofski]

@hughwilliams94 would you mind giving the instructions added in #353 a crack? I'd be interested whether these are enough to help you get going.

[hughwilliams94]

Hi thanks for updating the page. I had a go but I have been getting endless dependency errors from cabal. I think it may well be linked to this point in the Arch Wiki. I don't have any idea how the haskell packaging ecosystem works, but I tried the recommendations in that link and nothing seems to help.

[hughwilliams94]

Reading up a little it seems that Haskell is a bit messed up on Arch, I have decided to remove all of the system packages and try to go down the stack route to see whether the situation improves.

[hughwilliams94]

Switching to stack and then installing cabal allowed me to get these instructions to work. Purebred seems great! I suppose the best way to adapt the readme might be to add a link to this issue so that any other Arch user can try my workaround if they want too. Just for clarity's sake, I found the recommendation to switch to stack in this reddit post.