Am Mittwoch, 10. September 2008 00:59 schrieb Duncan Coutts:
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The .tar.gz packages are pristine and must not change, however the .cabal file that is kept in the hackage index could change and that information will be reflected both in the hackage website and just as importantly for tools like cabal-install.
I don’t think this is a good idea. The package description, list of exposed modules, etc. belongs to the software, in my opinion. So changing it means changing the software which should be reflected by a version number increase. Why can’t package maintainers double-check that they got everything in the Cabal file right before the package is uploaded to Hackage? And if one has forgotten a URL or something like that, it is still possible to release a new version where just the 4th component of the version number was changed which means precisely that the interface didn’t change.
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The difference here is that those two would be in the same format, the .cabal file inside the tarball that never changes and the one in the index which may do. This is also the objection that some people have, that it would be confusing to have the two versions, especially that unpacking the tarball gives the old unmodified version.
Yes, it *is* confusing.
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I hope to implement this feature in the new hackage server implementation that I'll be announcing shortly.
May I kindly ask you to *not* implement this feature?
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Best wishes, Wolfgang