Hello Michael, On 2014-12-31 at 15:10:37 +0100, Michael Snoyman wrote:
tl;dr: Now that ghc (the library) doesn't depend on Cabal (the library), can we remove Cabal from the global package database installed with GHC?
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For both of these reasons, I think we should limit the number of packages included in the global package database. One seemingly small step we could do on that front is not include extraneous packages. In GHC 7.10rc1, that includes Cabal and xhtml:
btw, haskeline and terminfo should be considered as well, according to your argument.
both packages are in the global package database, but could just as easily be removed from there and installed by users. The motivation for that would be to avoid problem (1) above.
However, as for xhtml, haskeline and terminfo, we had to register/expose them in the global pkg DB due to https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8919 and as for Cabal, I have been told (maybe Duncan can weigh in...?) that Haskell implementations need to provide it (together with a `*hc-pkg` executable) in order to conform to the CABAL specification[1]. Cheers, hvr [1]: https://www.haskell.org/cabal/proposal/pkg-spec.pdf