Greetings. I want to have a very quick discussion about which fields are required in the Cabal. I intend to implement these in the little sanity checker, and they should be documented. If we have any time at all before GHC gets released, we don't have much so this can't be a very long discussion ;) BTW, Should we regularize the names of the fields at this late date? Sorry for not doing this earlier. We have libBuildInfo for libraries, but buildInfo for executables. We also have exeName. Does anything outside of cabal depend on these names (yet)?[1] * What's required: Library: exposedModules is required. If it's empty, and BuildInfo is non-empty, this is an error. Executable: exeName and modulePath are required. If exeName is empty, this is a parse error. All buildInfo fields are optional. Everything in BuildInfo is optional. So that leaves us with the PackageDescription type itself. Let's talk about what I think is absoluteluy required for building, and then the fields I think should be there in any useful package that someone wants someone else to use. Are there any fields that any of the layred tools absolutely require? (Hackage, etc)? * What's needed for building I won't swear to it, but I think all you generally need to build a library is: package :: PackageIdentifier, -- From the library field: exposedModules :: [String], and an executable: package :: PackageIdentifier, -- from the executables field: exeName :: String, modulePath :: FilePath, * What any good package should have: package (name and version) :: PackageIdentifier, license :: License, -- OR? licenseFile :: FilePath, copyright :: String, maintainer :: String, synopsis :: String, Personally, I think it should be an error if any of these fields are missing. I think I'll go implement that now. Stop me if you object. peace, isaac [1] As a reminder, here are the the relevant types. data PackageDescription = PackageDescription { -- the following are required by all packages: package :: PackageIdentifier, license :: License, licenseFile :: FilePath, copyright :: String, maintainer :: String, author :: String, stability :: String, testedWith :: [(CompilerFlavor,VersionRange)], homepage :: String, pkgUrl :: String, synopsis :: String, description :: String, category :: String, buildDepends :: [Dependency], -- components library :: Maybe Library, executables :: [Executable] } data Library = Library { exposedModules :: [String], libBuildInfo :: BuildInfo } data Executable = Executable { exeName :: String, modulePath :: FilePath, buildInfo :: BuildInfo } data BuildInfo = BuildInfo { buildable :: Bool, -- ^ component is buildable here ccOptions :: [String], -- ^ options for C compiler ldOptions :: [String], -- ^ options for linker frameworks :: [String], cSources :: [FilePath], hsSourceDir :: FilePath, otherModules :: [String], extensions :: [Extension], extraLibs :: [String], extraLibDirs :: [String], includeDirs :: [FilePath], includes :: [FilePath], options :: [(CompilerFlavor,[String])] }