A brief stylistic note: to me, defunct has a connotation similar to that of deprecated, just stronger; meaning, it implies something closer to "NoLongerOnHackage" rather than wren's more general "NotOnHackage." In this case, the distinction is moot, because the code did happen to exist on Hackage, but I imagine there are cases one might want to warn against without this condition being true.


On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 6:32 PM, David Thomas <davidleothomas@gmail.com> wrote:
I think it needs to be both places.  I know when I'm searching, I often just go to google with "site:hackage.haskell.org inurl:latest"  I would be likely to miss it if it were just in the cabal file (although in the modules it could be as simple as a note saying "this is defunct - view the main page for an explanation of why).  Alternatively, if there is much reasoning specific to a particular module it could certainly go there, while the cabal gets the overview...


On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 3:23 PM, wren ng thornton <wren@freegeek.org> wrote:
On 1/24/13 1:40 AM, Ertugrul Söylemez wrote:
David Thomas <davidleothomas@gmail.com> wrote:

We could even set up NotOnHackage: a "package" repository just like
Hackage, except the packages are just documentation on why there is
no such package. Implementation-wise it's just a wiki; but the idea
is about how to organize the wiki. NotOnHackage should be organized
and searchable similar to Hackage itself, so that people can look
there when nothing looks promising on Hackage.

Couldn't this be actually on hackage, so one search turns up what you
want?

Yes.  There is no reason to put up a second Hackage for that one.
Without changing anything in the current system, packages can just
update their categories, so that they will be displayed below "Defunct"
or something like that.  This is fine, as only the categories of the
latest version are significant.

If you think this is a good idea, I will start with some of my
packages. =)

We've had package deprecation for a while, so the big trick IMO is the documentation. Good descriptions of why the package is defunct and suggestions on how people can do things better.

If we're going to do it on Hackage itself, I think the big question is one of style: should the documentation be all in the cabal file (i.e., on the package description page, with no modules in the package); or should we put the documentation into modules?


--
Live well,
~wren

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