On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 15:37 +0100, Marc Weber wrote:
Hi Maciej,
that's why I started hack-nix.
You can patch dependencies easily.
However you have to install the Nix package manager.
It also works with lates versions only because the dependency solves is written in Nix itself.
Which package is causing trouble to you?
For example happstack.
We can't expect package maintainers to test everything. So it must be people like you and me who fixes those changes.
Well. Except that it require bumping versions. Which according to hackage policy requires to fork a project (which makes it pointless in the first place)
The way to go is make hackage allow changing constraints on the fly notifying the author that he can update his repository.
This will work in most cases.
Bumping versions because a dependency has changed is bad as well.
This will cause to much overhead (and it dosen't solve the problem because the old package is still wrong).
Specifying dependencies must be decoupled from bumping versions.
It's because dep specs do depend on the "world" which can change..
At least that's what I think.
Hmm. When I was returning home I thought about some wiki-like system that would allow to say 'Package X is compatible/not compatible with Y'. Possibly something like: - Only the 'sure' deps are installed in default mode - When in 'expert' mode I can install any package which has not been marked as incompatible Then I can say that I tested built and: - It failed to built - It failed the automatic tests (if they exists)/does not work - It success So if there is versions: 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.0.1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 And: - 0.8 failed to built - >=1.0 <1.1 was marked by author - 1.1 was marked as success - 1.3 failed to build Then - In default/normal mode it can be used with 1.0, 1.0.1 and 1.1 - In expert mode 0.9 and 1.2 can be installed in addition to above - Any version can be installed in 'I'm feeling lucky' mode when I explicitly say package to ignore some restriction Possibly it is needed to collect user karma (or possibly already account verification is sufficient).
If you're interested in Nix and hack-nix I can show you how everything works using an SSH session.
Ekhm... SSH?
Marc Weber
Regards