On Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 01:53:11PM +0200, Daan Leijen wrote:
Although creating package description files in XML sounds neat, it also sounds like over-design at this stage. Why don't we use Haskell *values* to describe the packages? If we describe packages just like ghc-pkg is doing, as a Haskell record, we get:
- very simple code for reading and writing those - syntax that is understood by all haskell programmers - optional elements (by using records) - list elements (by using lists)
Might be not as powerful as using XML, but it might be just right for the thing we are trying to do.
I strongly strongly agree with this. XML is almost always the wrong way to go. I have been involved with several projects where for one reason or another we jumped on the XML bandwagon and have always been disapointed by the results. and excising XML once it has made headway into a project is no small task. John -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Meacham - California Institute of Technology, Alum. - john@foo.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------