"Daan Leijen"
Hi all,
Although creating package description files in XML sounds neat, it also sounds like over-design at this stage. Why don't we use Haskell *values* to describe the packages? If we describe packages just like ghc-pkg is doing, as a Haskell record, we get:
- very simple code for reading and writing those (SNIP)
My problem with this is that sure, at first we have a one-line parser, but if we change the data structure, then we'll have to write bits of the parser by hand, since read won't work. (I note that ghc-pkg looks like it might just use read, but actually has a happy parser). Also, the user will have to provide an empty value for fields they don't care about, right? That is a little annoying for a simple package. Is there a tool to parse ghc's package file like a tree I can walk? Also it is possible that non-haskell tools (like package managers) will want to muck around with the packages file. I'm hoping to avoid this with haskell-config (or whatever), but we might not get everything right. Remember that a major goal of this file is a kind of interoperablity between Haskell and an operating system's package manager. I don't know why XML is over-design. It's pretty easy to use and there is HaXml. Do you have any argument against it?
Just my 2cents,
This is the kinda thing I'm looking for when I asked, "Am I going horribly wrong". :) peace, isaac