package description fields

Ross Paterson

13 Jan 2005 13 Jan '05

10:38 a.m.

Is there any difference between Homepage and Package-Url? Can one of them be removed? How about moving Build-Depends to the package level (and maybe calling it Depends)? Is it sufficient to put License: BSD3 in the package description? Or should License-File be mandatory, and License just an optional hint? (Some people seem to think they should put a copy of the entire licence in each source file. :-) It doesn't seem to be very useful to have both a library and executables that use it in the same package (at least with the meaning implemented for GHC). One has to list all the library modules again under each executable.

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Isaac Jones

13 Jan 13 Jan

11:43 a.m.

Ross Paterson writes:

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Is there any difference between Homepage and Package-Url? Can one of them be removed?

I think package-url is meant to be the "click here to download the cabal-ized tarball of this very package" and homepage is meant to be the homepage. package-url is for Hackage, and homepage is for human consumption. I think package-url will end up being manditory (if you want to get your tool into hackage).

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How about moving Build-Depends to the package level (and maybe calling it Depends)?

That makes sense.

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Is it sufficient to put License: BSD3 in the package description? Or should License-File be mandatory, and License just an optional hint?

I don't really want to force people to Do the Right Thing necessarily, I just want to force them to think about a license before they put something in Hackage.

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(Some people seem to think they should put a copy of the entire licence in each source file. :-)

I once had an open-source project pulled out from under me and made closed source. So I'm a bit obsessive about it.

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It doesn't seem to be very useful to have both a library and executables that use it in the same package (at least with the meaning implemented for GHC). One has to list all the library modules again under each executable.

Which field are you referring to here? buildDepends? I think I agree. peace, isaac

Ross Paterson

1:12 p.m.

On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 08:43:16AM -0800, Isaac Jones wrote:

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Ross Paterson writes:

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Is it sufficient to put License: BSD3 in the package description? Or should License-File be mandatory, and License just an optional hint?

I don't really want to force people to Do the Right Thing necessarily, I just want to force them to think about a license before they put something in Hackage.

My problem is that these two fields are currently mutually exclusive, but I think they're both useful: - License gives an executive summary, imprecise but a quick guide. - License-File names a file that I can read for the details, and which the build system should copy into the installation directory (this will often be necessary to satisfy the licence). So I think authors should be able and encouraged to provide both, and certainly not encouraged to just provide License.

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It doesn't seem to be very useful to have both a library and executables that use it in the same package (at least with the meaning implemented for GHC). One has to list all the library modules again under each executable.

Which field are you referring to here? buildDepends? I think I agree.

Not really a field but the overall structure. I'm agreeing with what Simon said in http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/cvs-libraries/2005-January/003225.html

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Isaac Jones
Ross Paterson