Hello Duncan, Wednesday, September 26, 2007, 3:04:18 PM, you wrote:
i think that generally requirement to update libraries to meet 6.8 reqirements isn't a good idea. can we provide full support of old packages in 6.8, for example by inclusion both new and old Cabal versions in default installation?
That would not help a great deal. One of the main reasons many existing package will not build with ghc-6.8 is due to the split up of the base library.
this problem also needs to be solved. there was proposals to make virtual base 1.0.x package which reexports everything that ghc 6.6 base provided
flexability.) I would also not make anything work automatically since how does one tell which version of the Cabal library to use?
if i package my lib with Cabal x.y.z, i mention this fact in the .cabal file. on installation cabal/ghc infrastructure should examine it and find the best cabal version which is appropriate for installing my lib
Something we should encourage in this transition which will make things less disruptive in future is to get people to use "build-type: Simple" in their .cabal files and not use Setup.hs files at all.
they use Setup.hs only when simple builds are impossible so you can't propose anything except that to implement more features in Cabal :) i think that right solution is to develop Cabal in backward-cmpatible way between major version changes and ship with ghc all the major Cabal versions, f.e. 2.1.9 (last 2.x), 3.0.11 (last 3.x)... btw, the same applies to other libs bundled with ghc -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com