On 6/15/06, Bulat Ziganshin <bulat.ziganshin@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Lemmih,
Thursday, June 15, 2006, 1:25:27 PM, you wrote:
HackageDB is only for keeping track of Cabal packages and that's how it's gonna stay (with the possible exception of hosting documentation and darcs repositories, etc). A separate user-editable community report could then refer to packages on HackageDB.
yes, now we returns to the reasons why i propose to create separate database from HCAR data. one possible distinction may be that HackageDB is for robots that need to automatically install packages required in the TRUSTED way, while HcarDB is for humans searching for information about any haskell-related activity
just an example - i know about existence of XYZ library, but i'm not the author. i want to just describe it so that anyone can find info about this lib. can i go to HackageDB? i think no - it's only for authors that upload their libs there. using of unstructured wiki pages is bad - it don't allow to search on complex criteries, don't allow to track history, don't allow to automatically notify about new versions, don't allow to make automatic HWN reports and so on
so i propose either to extend HackageDB to allow inclusion of descriptions without libs itself, inlusion of papers, individuals and so on, or develop new web database with such abilities.
A new web database is needed.
we definitely need a libraries repository! but HackageDB on this moment contains only about 10 projects, mostly your own. why? lack of advertisement, or just because there are too many places where developer should register his library (maillist, hcar, wiki, hackage)?
It's most likely because cabal-get and cabal-put are really difficult to install. Of course, this will change when the tools are distributed with Cabal (which a paid hacker will be working on). I believe that the mailing list, the community report, the wiki and HackageDB all serve different needs. The mailing list is for announcements, the report is for semi-formal listing, the wiki is for casual listing and HackageDB is for automatic downloads. There is some overlap but it's not a lot.
i propose to search for the way that will allow to move information from HCAR and wiki pages to some web database, be it Hackage or new db. this should allow to create cpan-like database just now and don't wait while developers will grok advantages of HackageDB
We all want a neat, central package-database but few are willing to take the first step. (: -- Friendly, Lemmih