Beginner UX
Now and then I join #haskell
on freenode.
Some times a question pops up on ghchup. The details vary, but usually:
- the question is asked by someone who installs haskell for the first time
- the question is asked by someon who runs Mac OSX
- the question is asked by someone who who is not command line savvy (i.e. probably doesn't know what
.bashrc
is) - the question revolves around "setting locale up"
E.g. from today:
<Guest_61> In order to run ghc and cabal, you need to adjust your PATH variable.> >
You may want to source '/Users/h/.ghcup/env' in your shell> >
configuration to do so (e.g. ~/.bashrc).
People who dwell in #haskell
are mostly friendly but sometimes debugging involves a back and forth between the helpers and the person who seeks help: the latter is required to run some shells command, maybe doesn't really know how to do that, frustration builds up.
I am not a ghcup
user myself so my suggestions might be incorrect. Obviously there is no "one size fits all". Things I have noticed:
-
"You may want to source '/Users/h/.ghcup/env' in your shell"
is clear and concise for someone who knows what a shell is etc. but not for a beginner. Maybe add an example likeas an example: add the line "source xyz" (without quotes) to your .bashrc file
could work. - related: sometimes
.bashrc
(or similar) is not there.touch ~/.bashrc
should be harmless enough? - "previously the script would consider the user pressing enter without typing YES a no... but that confused users, so now you have to type YES or NO" is again reasonable for somewhat experienced users. As much as it is not right, most GUI-used users will just skip through prompts like this.
-
Haskell.org page for OSX recommends first to install cabal-install and ghc via
ghcup
and then installhaskell stack
. "The more there is, the easier it breaks."
I hope this brain dump is useful, thanks for such an useful project!