On 2016-09-16 10:48 AM, Imants Cekusins wrote:
ok how about a pragma:
7.13.6.3. Annotating modules
You can annotate modules with the |ANN| pragma by using the |module| keyword. For example:
{-# ANN module (Just "A `Maybe String' annotation") #-}
I suppose this could do, but there are some downsides: - somewhat cumbersome syntax, - reliance on a GHC extension, and worst of all, - not a Haskell value. The last point implies that the package.hs with this kind of module annotation could not produce a proper GenericPackageDescription when executed as a Haskell program.
if the topic is _Standard package file format_, why not agree on e.g. adopting *GenericPackageDescription* or another similar haskell type (rather than a text-based file) as the standard?
then any format (cabal, yaml, json, ...) may be used as long as a library exists and is maintained for each such format, which parses / produces the format from / to the standard type?
This makes perfect sense to me. The devil may be in the details. Would cabal-install need to link in all these maintained libraries statically? Or would there be some plug-in mechanism to load them on demand?