Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Announcement: Data.ISO3166_CountryCodes version 0.1

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 01:08, Jon Fairbairn wrote:

John Millikin writes:

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This allows users to install the package, without installing 3rd-party utilities, or downloading (possibly varying) versions from external websites. As your library is currently written, two users who install it might end up with dramatically different modules, depending on the contents of < http://www.iso.org/iso/iso3166_en_code_lists.txt >.

It would take a major global political ructions to make them /dramatically/ different, but I'm aware of the issue...

Well, say some country changes its name, and thus its code. Or some small country decides to join a larger one. Generated modules will then have different sets of constructors, but the same version number, violating the package versioning guidelines.

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Second, since the module is based on an external data set, a date-based version might more appropriate. "Version 0.1" means nothing, but "version 2010.4.24" indicates when the given version was generated. Alternatively, you can use a hybrid system to indicate both stability and the date -- such as 0.1.20100424.

Something like this is already on my TODO list, but the date that I want to appear in the version number would be the last-modified-date of the downloaded code-list. How do I get that (which the build already puts into a file¹) into the .cabal file?

You could generate the .cabal file also, but it would probably just be easier to check last-modified and set the version number directly.

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Third, if you'd like your module to be widely used in the Haskell community, the BSD3 or MIT license would be more appropriate. For technical reasons, the GPL and LGPL are essentially equivalent for Haskell packages. For political reasons, choosing the GPL will reduce your user market to free-software users. This isn't *necessarily* bad -- all of my large projects are GPL'd -- but be aware that your choice will heavily limit how many people use your library.

Something close GPL is what I want -- if I'm doing this for openly and for nothing, I don't see why anyone should build something on the back of it and make it proprietary without me having a say. I'd be happy to put a notice somewhere to the effect that I'm willing to negotiate terms for a separate license for inclusion in proprietary code, though I'd like to know the proper way of doing that.

That's fine, but be aware that it'll make your stated goal of "I think anything that uses country codes should use this datatype!" rather difficult to achieve. Many Haskell developers seem to oppose the GPL -- for example, see the comments when I released GPL'd bindings to CPython: < http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/ajbvb/cpython_haskell_ffi_bindings_...

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Fourth, consider storing your code in a version control system (like Darcs[1]),

it already is.

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and publishing it on a website like Patch-Tag[2].

I was waiting for it to be uploaded overnight. If my rsync system isn't configured to delete it next time,

  darcs get --lazy http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jf15/ISO3166_CountryCodes/

Ah -- there was no source repository stanza in the Cabal file, so I'd assumed it hadn't been checked into version control yet. I've rebased my repository upon yours, and attached the Darcs bundle for my changes to this email.

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Finally, instead of using a Makefile to build the library or documentation, consider using the cabal-install utility[4]. It's much more common for a library to use "cabal build" or "cabal haddock" than custom make commands, and external tools (such as Hackage) will work better.

I'd be grateful for a patch (against my repo) that did that. I've used make for thirty years, so learning something else doesn't hold great appeal.

Cabal doesn't replace Make -- it just defines some basic commands for compiling, building the documentation, etc. This allows Caballized packages to be installed on a variety of systems, which might not have a sane version of Make installed. Usually, this is sufficient to build all but the most complex of packages (eg, Gtk2Hs).