hope this is the right list for hackage issues?-)
1. hackage trac does not seem to have a "register" option
(compare hackage trac with ghc trac). individual logins
are nice because:
- gives individual rather than anonymous reporters
- one place less to support spam email harvesters
(account name instead of full email address)
- "register" is always there, hence easy to find, unlike
the hint hidden on the trac home page that hackage
is still abusing the haskell' trac.. (i had started this
email before i found that hint;-)
2. the hackage package list ought to have a link to an
alphabetical index (i often know the package name, but
not the likely categories, so i tend to 'search' on that
page..).
3. the hackage package list ought to list successful and failed
builds (simply a list of compiler versions, each one green
or red, depending on success, with direct link to build/
failure log; this would fit into the one-line-per-package
format) for each entry, and report them to package authors.
build failures currently seem to be created automatically
where package authors may not notice them? at least,
that would explain things like (just examples of things i
happened to have looked at, no offence intended;-)
- hint: advertised to work with ghc 6.8.x on the same
package page that lists a build failure for ghc-6.8
- haskell-src-exts: lists a build failure for ghc-6.8
the first is probably a too optimistic cabal version
spec, the second is a haddock issue. but that makes
two out of two for package i looked up recently..
4. is there an cross-package index of builds/failures, so that
one might see trends (cabal issues, base package issues,
bytestring issues, next big thing issues,..) and statistics
(how many hackage packages fail/build, which compiler/
cabal/haddock versions are successful for the largest
number of packages, etc.)?
5. generally, i've always thought that hackage works the
wrong way round; instead of yet another push-based
place for people to put and forget copies of things, it
should work as a pull-based cache:
- author registers package, with author/maintainer
email and package url
- hackage retrieves package, tries to build, and either
accepts or not, reporting all to author
- occasionally, hackage scans for new versions to
be retrieved, again notifying authors of uploads
and problem reports
- the maintainer email on each hackage package page
ought to be
(a) protected, not plain text
(b) annotated with last successful contact date
if i understand #243, authors are not even notified
when someone uploads their packages?
claus
