Samuel Bronson <naesten@gmail.com> writes:
I'm sure most of us have used CVS and/or SVN with existing projects (or before darcs, or for things which need to run everywhere and not just where GHC runs), and some of us probably don't like darcs, but that doesn't mean others of us don't feel the need for darcs hosting.
I can attest to this. I've been hosting various darcs repos and mirros for some people on #haskell. I had a GForge test installation on ScannedInAvian.org years ago. I hacked in darcs support by slightly modifying the ssh key submission to allow submission of GPG keys. It's easy to get an ugly but working solution. Thesis: The Haskell community needs a HaskellForge. Point: Users can't find libraries and their details. Counterpoint: Hackage will cover that for smaller projects. Supporting evidence: I recently asked someone why they chose OCaml over Haskell. They said it's because OCaml has a wider range of libraries, especially OpenGL and SDL bindings. I know that Haskell has both of those, but it would appear that he couldn't find them. Here's a regular scavenger hunt you can see in the #haskell logs. What's the difference between HOpenGL and OpenGL? Where are the docs? Which one is included with the ghc6 debs? I'm not picking on HOpenGL specifically, I can think of lots of projects where details are hard to find (my code too!). Some others that come to mind are SOEGraphics and Yampa / Yampa Arcade. Coming at it from the other direction, can you figure what projects are on haskell.org? How many project webpages can you find without Google? I think the biggest lack is a searchable index of packages and details. A HaskellForge would have a searchable index of projects, but so will Hackage. But, hackage and cabal are more like deb/rpm than sourceforge. Hackage will never cover mailing lists, forums, or bug/feature trackers. So, I guess it depends on what you think the Haskell community needs. -- It seems I've been living two lives. One life is a self-employed web developer In the other life, I'm shapr, functional programmer. | www.ScannedInAvian.com One of these lives has futures (and subcontinuations!)| --Shae Matijs Erisson