Hi Magnus,
thank you for tackling this problem.
I think that we should remove the data files completely from the packages and only host them at a well-known URL (on kiwilight.com or haskell.org).
The notion that those files reside on a remote server concerns me a little, because it means that reproducibility goes, basically, straight out of the window. If you run cabal2arch to generate a PKGBUILD, and then run the exact same command just a few seconds later, it might generate a different PKGBUILD just because some invisible file has changed on a remote server at the other side of the earth. That property feels like it's bound to create surprises for people. Also, this change would reduce the amount of information expressed by cabal2arch's version number even further into the direction of "zero" than it already is.
I have a feeling that using shared objects (dynamic libraries) will force us to change it anyway.
Has anyone figured out how shared linking works in GHC 7? Does it utilize shared libraries if they're available? Take care, Peter