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Standardize binary distribution doc files

I'm making a pass at the documentation in general, and next up on my list is simplifying the building process a bit. I hope to create something like docs/dist-install that would collect and hold all of the generated documentation. This would help in writing the docs, as you could verify links, say, from the user's guide to the library documentation. This would also allow installation and distribution to mainly be a cp.

While looking into this, I ran into some discrepancies between releases. The contents of !https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/VERSION/docs for 7.10, 8.0, and 8.2 are all different. 8.0 dropped *.ps files and haddock.pdf. 8.2 now additionally holds a windows folder that has a wide array of binaries and documentation.

Going back further, the Cabal user's guide used to be included. I searched around for a reason that it was dropped and only found a git commit citing the change from docbook. But now most sources use Sphinx, so we could generate and include them if we so wished.

The Cabal guide can be found at:

The Haddock guide can be found at:

Unfortunately, the www.haskell.org links are the most prominent when Googled.

To bring this back to a point, I would like to clean up the docs folder of the distribution. The windows folder inside seems like it might be a mistake. Additionally, Cabal and Haddock have ended up in strange positions, and I think they probably could both use the same solution.

Trac metadata
Trac field Value
Version 8.2.1
Type FeatureRequest
TypeOfFailure OtherFailure
Priority normal
Resolution Unresolved
Component Build System
Test case
Differential revisions
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Blocking
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