On Saturday 01 September 2007 20:13, Ross Paterson wrote:
[...] However a package that uses a boilerplate Setup.hs (as 90% of the packages on Hackage do) needs only backwards compatibility of the .cabal format, and that has been carefully preserved.
Alas, that's true: Today I had to unbreak the "time" package exactly because the .cabal format has been changed.
[...] There is a common issue, but it's the "birthpangs of a new package system". Pouring concrete over Cabal in its current state won't help.
Fair enough, but giving a painful birth for months after months is really annoying. Our very big mistake has been to use Cabal in its current immature state in the GHC (+ libs) build system. Being progressive and open to new technologies is a good thing, but *not* in the area of versioning systems, build infrastructure and the like, at least this should be avoided when the SW in question is built by a large amount of people. Experiments should be done in isolation... Cheers, S.