Yes thats the kind of thing I was thinking... but it has a few things missing: #!/bin/sh echo "wget http://packages.haskell.org/$@" echo "tar -zxvf $@.tgz" echo "cd $@" echo "./Setup.lhs configure" echo "./Setup.lhs build" echo "./Setup.lhs install" Fetching a list of mirrors CPAN style would be useful, and having it select a default mirror by TLD would save a lot of unnecessary network traffic. Dependancy resolution is also missing (and requires recursive fetch/install), apperently Cabal includes dependancy info... so it is just a matter of reading it out of the package and doing the recursion. Also a section like gentoo's make.conf (for ebuilds) where local options can be set in a file (for things like optimisation flags etc)... I would have thought a little Haskell binary would be ideal for this... As for the server including features like listing packages and searching packages seems like a good idea... Has anyone considered using an application interface like SOAP (or something else) for the server, so that it can easily be driven from a command-line (or GUI) client - rather than just a web site? Keean. Isaac Jones wrote:
Indeed it has always been the plan to have both: http://www.haskell.org/cabal/proposal/a818.html
And the program to generate a Debian package from a Cabal package is already implemented and in use (thanks, John Goerzen!)
Of course, the client isn't the hard part, the server / database is, and that's under way, but it's just a prototype now:
http://www.scannedinavian.org/cgi-bin/hackage/hackage
peace,
isaac