On Fri, 2010-11-19 at 12:27 +0000, Duncan Coutts wrote:
Matt and I also discussed making the 00-index.tar.gz into a RESTful format by adding proper URLs for package tarballs.
Indeed we could go further and use a single general format for describing or distributing bundles of packages. Use case: local build trees --------------------------- A bunch of related packages (e.g. gtk2hs, happstack-* etc) unpacked locally. /home/me/prgs/myproj/foo/ --top of source tree for foo /home/me/prgs/myproj/foo/foo.cabal /home/me/prgs/myproj/bar/ /home/me/prgs/myproj/bar/bar.cabal Now we can have an index.tar containing symlinks to .cabal files! /home/me/prgs/myproj/index.tar: containing foo.cabal -> foo/foo.cabal bar.cabal -> bar/bar.cabal So these are not copies of the .cabal files, these really are symlinks to the local .cabal files (but inside the tarball). I guess we need some extra index entry to point to the location of the source tree, though it's not a .tar.gz kind. Now just as we can have symlinks (or really URLs) inside the tarball, we could also have full file contents there too. Next use case... Use case: distribution bundles ------------------------------ Shipping a bunch of source packages as a single file some-name.tar: containing foo.cabal foo-1.0.tar.gz bar.cabal bar-1.0.tar.gz So now instead of symlinks/URLs to separate tarballs, the whole file contents is right there. We have a hackage-like index plus the file tarballs. We might have to have a different naming convention than simply blah.tar for these indexes, otherwise cabal install might not know how to interpret "cabal install foo.tar" should it interpret foo.tar as an index or as a single package? Opinions? Duncan