> It's not clear to me, from reading your email what you actually want,
how you tried to get there, and what problems you ran into.

Yes, I left out some detail. I did indeed get `pacman` failures based on ghc-7.6. There were a number. I'll review them as you suggest.

> Of course you can help with step 2 yourself by cloning habs and using

`cblrepo` to add them and verify they build properly.

That makes sense. I can't `man pacman` nor `man cblrepo` at the moment, but I imagine I can also install these packages directly from the local chroot that is created in the build process? This (default; no option -l <dir>) layout confuses me more than I would prefer. That would be my goal: to be able to build the packages locally if required. Presumably I can also be helpful by indicating that this process succeeds.

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 7:31 AM, Magnus Therning <magnus@therning.org> wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 12:54 PM, Al Matthews <prolepsis@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi list. I'll ask as naively as possible in hopes of helping (me but also)
> someone else.
>
> Being new, I've managed to hose my Arch haskell installation fairly well.

I highly doubt it isn't something we can help you fix! :)

> I've been tracking haskell-core
>
> [haskell-core]
> ###Server = http://www.kiwilight.com/haskell/core/$arch
> Server = http://xsounds.org/~haskell/core/$arch
>
> and from there
>
> # Pacman won't upgrade packages listed in IgnorePkg and members of
> IgnoreGroup
>
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-aeson 0.6.2.1-3
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-attoparsec 0.10.4.0-4
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-blaze-builder 0.3.3.0-1
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-blaze-html 0.6.1.2-1
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-blaze-markup 0.5.1.6-1
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-data-default 0.5.3-2
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-data-default-instances-dlist 0.0.1-2
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-dlist 0.5-27
> #IgnorePkg = haskell-graphviz
> [etc]
>
> , this because I was trying to maintain an installation of Pandoc which
> relied on "older"
>  packages by the time I had managed to install something newer, maybe
> bloomfilter.
>
> Anyway, by now ghc is up to 7.8.2 and I remain with a lot of built-depends
> over 7.6.3. pacman is upset.
>
> I hesitate to hack in anything from [haskell-testing] until I'm more
> conceptually clear.

[haskell-testing] is currently completely empty.  When GHC 7.8 was
release I emptied testing into core.

> I even built big swaths of habs, on my local, to see what would happen, so,
> guidance as regards the intended purpose, or advanced use, of some of these
> tools is appreciated. Pointers to relevant documentation or system files are
> naturally most welcome.

The main thing is probably to fully understand what your goal is.
It's not clear to me, from reading your email what you actually want,
how you tried to get there, and what problems you ran into.

If it's as simple as you just wanting to upgrade your system?
1. Make sure you have no Haskell packages on your ignore list.
2 Try a straight upgrade.  If that fails with `pacman` telling you
that some package depends on ghc-7.6 then that most likely means the
package in question has been dropped from [haskell-core].  Raise an
issue for each such package you can't live without
(https://github.com/archhaskell/habs/issues).
3. Remove all such packages you can live without.
4. Wait until someone's gotten around to re-add the packages that are
crucial to you, then restart from 1.

Of course you can help with step 2 yourself by cloning habs and using
`cblrepo` to add them and verify they build properly.

/M

--
Magnus Therning                      OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4
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