Greetings, Most of the discussion about the "library infrastructure" has been about whether to start with a build system or a distribution system. The solution to that discussion, in my mind, is to come at it from both sides and meet in the middle. Peter Simons will be working on a proposal for distribution, and we'll be working together to integrate some kind of package / build / install / distribute mechanism. With that in mind, we need to make some decisions about what the build infrastructure will look like. To recap, I propose that we have 1) a "default" makefile system. Alastair Reid is working on one based on fptools' makefiles. We can provide a tool to generate a skeleton makefile system for new libraries. 2) an abstraction layer, perhaps like "distutils" for python combined with Debian's deiban/rules file which will allow us to build layered tools which will: - Make it so that 3rd party library authors don't _have_ to change their build system - Make it easier for packagers to make Debian / Redhat / FreeBSD packages, - Make it easier for 3rd parties to distribute their libraries on their home pages (probably in a source tarball) - Make it easier for end users to download, install, and keep up to date 3rd party libraries My proposal is on the wiki (see URL below). Does anyone have comments about the proposal? Does anyone think that something similar to what Python has is a bad idea? http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/LibraryInfrastructure peace, isaac