Hi,

On Mon, Nov 08, 2010 at 06:58:52PM +0000, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> >> http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/AddingPackages#PackageRequirements
> >
> > Well, the policy can be changed if necessary (not that I'm proposing that
> > here).
> > While packages may need to be present to build an application in the
> > platform, they don't necessarily need to be exposed as part of the platform.
>
> That's true for binary packaging systems. It would not be true for
> source based ones e.g. gentoo, freebsd ports, macports or indeed
> someone starting with just ghc and using cabal to install the platform
> meta-package.

On the other hand, on those systems people would get all packages
(libraries and programs) required by the Haskell platform, plus
some additional ones. Wouldn't hurt too much, IMHO (allthough it
feels a little bit wrong if the platform would contain programs
that can't be built with only the platform).

I think this was exactly the situation rationale 8.5 means to avoid.

I do think it would be technically possible to make this work, but only by greatly increasing the maintenance cost for HP (I underestimated this cost originally). It's probably not a good trade-off. If cabal supported something like run-time-specified repos it would be much simpler.

John