Hi, (this is mostly a rant, but hopefully a constructive one) the Haskell/cabal/hackage eco system is pretty great, as we all know. But there is one huge gaping omission there: Changelogs! I’m involved in packaging Haskell stuff for Debian. Now, the Debian tools we have for that tell me „Hlint has a new version, 1.6.5, which is newer than the one you packages, 1.6.4. Huh, nice. What has changed? Is it relevant for Debian? Is it worth a new upload? There is no easy way to find out: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hlint lists no changes http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/hlint/ lists no changes (and not every package has a homepage) http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/darcs/hlint/ contains on Changes file (and not every package has a (linked) darcs repository) http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/darcs/hlint/ also has no web frontend. Which leaves me with the option of getting the darcs repo and looking through "darcs changes". If I know of a repository for the package. So please, package authors, put Changes files in your packages and keep the current for now. And cabal/hackage guys: Llease introduce a standard Changes format for cabal packages so that http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hlint readily lists (or links to) changes. Thanks, Joachim -- Joachim "nomeata" Breitner Debian Developer nomeata@debian.org | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Keyid: 4743206C JID: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de | http://people.debian.org/~nomeata
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 9:27 AM, Joachim
Breitner
And cabal/hackage guys: Llease introduce a standard Changes format for cabal packages so that http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hlint readily lists (or links to) changes.
(+1) Standardizing a CHANGES format and linking to from Hackage would be a very simple way to do changelogs in Hackage. I like this solution. Jeff Wheeler
On Thu, Aug 06, 2009 at 04:27:56PM +0200, Joachim Breitner wrote:
And cabal/hackage guys: Llease introduce a standard Changes format for cabal packages so that http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hlint readily lists (or links to) changes.
I second that! +1 -- Felipe.
Hi
I’m involved in packaging Haskell stuff for Debian. Now, the Debian tools we have for that tell me „Hlint has a new version, 1.6.5, which is newer than the one you packages, 1.6.4.
Huh, nice. What has changed? Is it relevant for Debian? Is it worth a new upload? There is no easy way to find out:
I went to my bug tracker, which informs me that: http://code.google.com/p/ndmitchell/issues/detail?id=206 http://code.google.com/p/ndmitchell/issues/detail?id=208 Were both fixed in this release. I don't think this is a practical way for people to find out what gets fixed, since it was rather difficult to get the information out, but it is the answer if you were interested in this case.
http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/darcs/hlint/ also has no web frontend.
Which leaves me with the option of getting the darcs repo and looking through "darcs changes". If I know of a repository for the package.
I also don't tag the darcs version when I make a release - I probably should...
So please, package authors, put Changes files in your packages and keep the current for now.
The problem is that this is the kind of dull administration stuff that isn't coding in Haskell, so tends to get neglected. If I know there is a user demand for a changelog I'm happy to provide one, but I don't want to waste time on something that isn't useful. For people who have a near zero-upgrade cost (anyone who is using Cabal) I'd suggest they upgrade to all of my packages immediately. For this change, I'd say it probably isn't worth rolling a new debian binary unless it's particularly easy. I will start a changelog in hlint - and for some of my projects (tagsoup) I do include a changelog in the user manual. Thanks Neil
Hi, Am Donnerstag, den 06.08.2009, 15:39 +0100 schrieb Neil Mitchell:
So please, package authors, put Changes files in your packages and keep the current for now.
The problem is that this is the kind of dull administration stuff that isn't coding in Haskell, so tends to get neglected. If I know there is a user demand for a changelog I'm happy to provide one, but I don't want to waste time on something that isn't useful. For people who have a near zero-upgrade cost (anyone who is using Cabal) I'd suggest they upgrade to all of my packages immediately. For this change, I'd say it probably isn't worth rolling a new debian binary unless it's particularly easy.
I will start a changelog in hlint - and for some of my projects (tagsoup) I do include a changelog in the user manual.
thanks, a changelog in the manual is at least a start. But the point I’d like to make is that even if everyone provides a changelog somewhere, if you need to keep track of four dozen packages[1], finding out where that is on a per-package base is quite some hassle. And even ordinary users are curious about the improvements that were made between two releases! If the changelog had a properly specified format and location, cabal upgrade could, if the user wants it, tell him all the downloaded changes. This really helps him to keep up-to-date. It is also a good channel for the authors to talk to his users („see this nice module I added to the package“, „some parts of the API are deprecated now, please move to this part“). Last but not least having documented changes is QA measure that the Haskell platform in the wider sense deserves. Greetings, Joachim -- Joachim "nomeata" Breitner mail: mail@joachim-breitner.de | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Key: 4743206C JID: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/ Debian Developer: nomeata@debian.org
Hi
http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/darcs/hlint/CHANGES.txt
That will now be updated for future HLint releases.
Thanks, Neil
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Joachim
Breitner
Hi,
Am Donnerstag, den 06.08.2009, 15:39 +0100 schrieb Neil Mitchell:
So please, package authors, put Changes files in your packages and keep the current for now.
The problem is that this is the kind of dull administration stuff that isn't coding in Haskell, so tends to get neglected. If I know there is a user demand for a changelog I'm happy to provide one, but I don't want to waste time on something that isn't useful. For people who have a near zero-upgrade cost (anyone who is using Cabal) I'd suggest they upgrade to all of my packages immediately. For this change, I'd say it probably isn't worth rolling a new debian binary unless it's particularly easy.
I will start a changelog in hlint - and for some of my projects (tagsoup) I do include a changelog in the user manual.
thanks, a changelog in the manual is at least a start. But the point I’d like to make is that even if everyone provides a changelog somewhere, if you need to keep track of four dozen packages[1], finding out where that is on a per-package base is quite some hassle. And even ordinary users are curious about the improvements that were made between two releases!
If the changelog had a properly specified format and location, cabal upgrade could, if the user wants it, tell him all the downloaded changes. This really helps him to keep up-to-date. It is also a good channel for the authors to talk to his users („see this nice module I added to the package“, „some parts of the API are deprecated now, please move to this part“). Last but not least having documented changes is QA measure that the Haskell platform in the wider sense deserves.
Greetings, Joachim
-- Joachim "nomeata" Breitner mail: mail@joachim-breitner.de | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Key: 4743206C JID: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/ Debian Developer: nomeata@debian.org
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Did you see these tickets
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/299
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/244 ?
Probably the real proposal could be fixed in comments for that tickets,
so anyone who wants to implement that feature would see all possible
solutions in one place, without browsing through haskell-cafe archives.
Joachim Breitner
If the changelog had a properly specified format and location, cabal upgrade could, if the user wants it, tell him all the downloaded changes. This really helps him to keep up-to-date. It is also a good channel for the authors to talk to his users („see this nice module I added to the package“, „some parts of the API are deprecated now, please move to this part“). Last but not least having documented changes is QA measure that the Haskell platform in the wider sense deserves.
Greetings, Joachim
Hi, Am Donnerstag, den 06.08.2009, 20:07 +0300 schrieb Max Desyatov:
Did you see these tickets http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/299 http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/244 ?
Probably the real proposal could be fixed in comments for that tickets, so anyone who wants to implement that feature would see all possible solutions in one place, without browsing through haskell-cafe archives.
no, given that I wrote a rant, I did not do research :-). These tickets describe what I want, and I’ll be watching them, and hope for progress :-) Thanks, Joachim -- Joachim "nomeata" Breitner mail: mail@joachim-breitner.de | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Key: 4743206C JID: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/ Debian Developer: nomeata@debian.org
2009/8/7 Neil Mitchell
Which leaves me with the option of getting the darcs repo and looking through "darcs changes". If I know of a repository for the package.
I also don't tag the darcs version when I make a release - I probably should...
This could be a nice feature for cabal (or an external tool... cabal-release?): auto-increment the version number (of course, the 'level' of release would have to be specified) and tag the current darcs repo accordingly, then 'cabal upload' it. - George
Agreed! I put in a request for this about a year ago: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/299 There is a bit of follow-up discussion there. John +++ Joachim Breitner [Aug 06 09 16:27 ]:
Hi,
(this is mostly a rant, but hopefully a constructive one)
the Haskell/cabal/hackage eco system is pretty great, as we all know. But there is one huge gaping omission there: Changelogs!
I’m involved in packaging Haskell stuff for Debian. Now, the Debian tools we have for that tell me „Hlint has a new version, 1.6.5, which is newer than the one you packages, 1.6.4.
Huh, nice. What has changed? Is it relevant for Debian? Is it worth a new upload? There is no easy way to find out:
http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hlint lists no changes http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/hlint/ lists no changes (and not every package has a homepage) http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/darcs/hlint/ contains on Changes file (and not every package has a (linked) darcs repository) http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/darcs/hlint/ also has no web frontend.
Which leaves me with the option of getting the darcs repo and looking through "darcs changes". If I know of a repository for the package.
So please, package authors, put Changes files in your packages and keep the current for now.
And cabal/hackage guys: Llease introduce a standard Changes format for cabal packages so that http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hlint readily lists (or links to) changes.
Thanks, Joachim
-- Joachim "nomeata" Breitner Debian Developer nomeata@debian.org | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Keyid: 4743206C JID: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de | http://people.debian.org/~nomeata
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participants (7)
-
Felipe Lessa -
George Pollard -
Jeff Wheeler -
Joachim Breitner -
John MacFarlane -
Max Desyatov -
Neil Mitchell