Adrian Hey
I've been trying 6.4 on one of my libraries and it seems it doesn't like my package names. I give my packages the same name as their place in the module hierarchy.
e.g. name: Data.COrdering
Well (trying to answer my own question), I guess the reason for this change is probably Cabal related, so perhaps someone here can explain.
I think it is something to do with the regular expression describing legal Cabal package names. A package name basically has three components: name, version number, and tag. The middle part, the version number, may contain dots, but I imagine the outer parts, the name and tag, may not?
Why not just use the root in the hierarchical module name space as the package name? (or use the package name as the root in the hierarchical module name space).
The main design criterion for the hierarchical scheme was to classify by functionality, rather than by arbitrary names. Joanna Random Programmer should be able to quickly descend the tree hierarchy to find a module suiting her specific needs, rather than having to look through a 1000-long flat list of package names, which may or may not adequately describe their contents.
But I definitely think the most obviously appropriate (I.E. consistent with hierarchical module scheme) package names like "Data.COrdering" should at least be legal.
Yes, perhaps. At least, I can't think of a good argument not to - it is only the practical difficulty of parsing the full packagename with version numbers that prevents it, and there may be a way to fix that. Regards, Malcolm