[xmonad] Issue 600 in xmonad: conflicting install instructions

[c***@google.com]

Status: New
Owner: ----

New issue 600 by ***@gmail.com: conflicting install instructions
https://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=600

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. http://xmonad.org
2. follow link to http://xmonad.org/download.html
3. read: cabal install http://code.haskell.org/xmonad/xmonad.tar.gz
4. follow link to http://xmonad.org/intro.html
5. read conflicting instruction: cabal install xmonad

Let's at least have a consistently documented and supported way to build,
especially since building xmonad is quite prone to being broken in
different circumstances.

[c***@google.com]

Comment #1 on issue 600 by ***@gmail.com: conflicting install
instructions
https://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=600

All three options presented on download.html are supposed to work:

- distro pkg
- hackage
- darcs get / tar.gz snapshot

"cabal install http://code.haskell.org/xmonad/xmonad.tar.gz" is just there
for people that have trouble installing darcs (such as archlinux
currently), but for whatever reason would like to run the development
version.

We can remove "cabal install http://code.haskell.org/xmonad/xmonad.tar.gz"
(PR https://github.com/davidlazar/xmonad.org), but that still leaves people
the choice between using a release or using the bleeding edge.

[c***@google.com]

Comment #2 on issue 600 by ***@gmail.com: conflicting install
instructions
https://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=600

Having different ways of installing is great. There is just a little
confusing inconsistency going on. And I actually wasn't super clear in my
bug.

Let me clarify. Background: http://xmonad.org/download.html is where users
are funneled from the main page, it appears to overview the install
methods, and leads users on to http://xmonad.org/intro.html which appears
to be the complete documentation on install.

1. download.html says "After you've downloaded, follow the install
instructions (link to intro.html)", then on intro.html, the tarbal you
downloaded is never mentioned. So either remove the mention of downloading
manually from hackage, or have an instruction which involves
xmonad-<version>.tar.gz on intro.html. I still don't know how you would
install the tarball. cabal install xmonad-<version>.tar.gz? The download
link on hackage is not the easiest to find (at the bottom of the page), so
I'd prefer steering people to the simpler cabal install <name> method.

2. intro.html should mention the "cabal install
http://code.haskell.org/xmonad/xmonad.tar.gz" method which was first
mentioned on the download.html page or else it's confusing (this first page
said I could do this, and now this other page looks like it's meant to
cover everything, but it doesn't say I can do this).

If this makes sense, I can write a patch and do a PR on github.

[c***@google.com]

Comment #3 on issue 600 by ***@gmail.com: conflicting install
instructions
https://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=600

I would say go ahead and make a pull request. Personally I think it makes
more sense to add information to both pages as appropriate to make them
consistent than it does to remove information from either.

[c***@google.com]

Comment #4 on issue 600 by ***@gmail.com: conflicting install
instructions
https://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=600

Wait, pull requests? github? The last I knew xmonad uses darcs and is not
hosted on github. Did I miss something?

I do agree that adding some information to the pages makes sense.