absolutely, this has occurred to me too. There should be a stanard Cabal README file, and Don's mkcabal tool could drop it in the tree.
This occurred to me too. My current plan for mkcabal is that it creates:
foo.cabal Setup.lhs README LICENSE
based on a series of interactive questions, or command line args.
is mkcabal going to be a standard part of cabal installations? btw, here is some suggested text for the useful "how to write.." page you started (I know it is a wiki, but I don't want to mess up the page at this point;-). thanks, claus -------------------------------------------- 0. The intended user experience When Haskell programmers go out in search of existing functionality, be it a library, a tool, or an application, the intended approach is roughly this: 1 visit haskell.org, 2 find the library/program they are looking for (if not found, try mailing list; if it is hidden, try improving haskell.org; if it does not exist, try contributing code/documentation/requirements/..) 3 download 4 install 5 enjoy but each of these steps is endangered by several potential road blocks, and code authors can do a lot to help code users avoid such blocks. Even if steps 1/2 are successful, and ensuring step 5 is the main concern of code authors and users, it is often steps 3/4 that get in the way: - which is the latest version? what state is it in? is it still maintained/in use? - what are its aims? where is the documentation? - which is the right version for given OS and Haskell implementation? - how is it packaged, and what tools are needed to get and unpack it? - how is it installed, and what tools are needed to install it? - how do we avoid IDR (infinite dependency recursion)? - how do we provide/acquire the knowledge and tool-chains needed? There is a well-established tradition for communicating the answers to these questions: the README text file, placed in a prominent position at the code's location (these days often accompanied, but not replaced, by a more extensive web page). But as other communities, the Haskell community has Haskell-specific answers to many of these questions, independent of the particular Haskell code to publish. This document is all about how to publish your Haskell code in such a way as to make the Haskell code users' experience as smooth as possible. Until there is a version of this text targetted more specifically at code users, they might find it helpful to browse this page for insights into the Haskell code authors' mind- and tool-set.