[MacPorts] #26582: darcs takes forever to install - can we install a prebuilt binary instead?

[MacPorts]

#26582: darcs takes forever to install - can we install a prebuilt binary instead?
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 Reporter:  kowey@…          |       Owner:  macports-tickets@…                   
     Type:  defect           |      Status:  new                                  
 Priority:  Normal           |   Milestone:                                       
Component:  ports            |     Version:  1.9.1                                
 Keywords:                   |        Port:                                       
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 Hello!

 We have a sort of longstanding problem in the Darcs community, which I'm
 hoping MacPorts could help with.

 1. Installing Darcs requires installing GHC, which for various reasons,
 takes a very long time to install.

 2. Often the kinds of people who install Darcs are "involuntary" users,
 ie. folks who don't care about version control systems, but just want to
 install Darcs so they can grab some source tree

 3. These people (already yak-shave impeded from completing their main
 task) type "sudo port install darcs"... and find that it doesn't complete
 until 12 hours or later or something absurd

 4. Therefore they decide that they hate Darcs.

 This is a sort of recurring pattern that hurts Darcs reputation a lot.
 We'd love to make a better first impression on our users.  Can MacPorts
 help?

 Installing a version control system is a case where taking a very long
 time to install can be extremely harmful to the first time user
 experience, because the first time you decide to install that system is
 often when you're impatient to get something else done and are definitely
 not prepared to wait.

 Would it be at all possible for the Darcs port to install a prebuilt
 binary by default? If it helps, we now have an official MacOS X binary for
 Darcs (which we did not before 2010).

 A variant that does this would be better than nothing, but I worry that it
 would only be marginally useful unless it was a default, or failing that,
 unless the Darcs port could somehow jump up and down and say "Hey! You
 should use the binary instead!"

 Thanks!

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/26582>
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