On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 17:26 +0100, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
| I see it as a really big deal that documentation becomes fragmented when | one is using many packages, so that it's harder to find what you want. | In fact, I'd classify that as the single biggest reason that I don't use | many packages now
When you install packages A,B,C, the documentation for A,B,C (and nothing else) ought to be locally available as an integrated whole, much as at the GHC web site. I don't know whether Cabal does, or could do, that, but it's surely what one would expect.
The docs for those packages would be available for packages installed via cabal (assuming the user did the optional haddock step) and would link to each other. What is missing from the local docs is a single integrated index page that lists all the modules and then links off to the various packages's docs like we have on the ghc website. The problem with generating one of those is what manages it? What package would it belong to etc. On some systems (windows, gnome) there are dedicated help viewers that can help with this contents/index issue. haddock supports both (mshelp, devhelp). I'm not sure everyone would find that a sufficient solution however. Duncan