Re: [Haskell-cafe] Hackage and HaXml situation

2008-09-19 Thread John Goerzen
Duncan Coutts wrote:
 On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 15:32 -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
 Basically for each package we have an optional suggested version
 constraint. This would be used in the hackage website to direct people

That would solve the problem nicely, I think.  Do you have an ETA for
this feature?


 to the 'current' version but most importantly it'd be used by
 cabal-install and other cabal - native package conversion tools. It
 wold be editable on the hackage website by the package author/maintainer
 and probably other people with the role of managing the hackage
 collection.
 
 Cases like HaXml-1.13 - 1.19 (or a future stable version) or old-time
 - time are also things that the platform might be able to help with in
 future by managing the transition in a more coherent way rather than
 what we have now where the transition is rather hap-hazard with half
 using one and half the other.
 
 Duncan
 
 

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Hackage and HaXml situation

2008-09-18 Thread Marc Weber
In your particular problem there is another way:
Ask the distributors to ship both HaXmL versions..
(Most systems will install one only by default (an update supersedes the
older one :-( ) But most distributions do let you install two or more
versions (?)

I think the way to go is beeing able to represent all the work you've
done.
I'd like to add a pointer to vxml on hackage. But it's still way to
unstable for a release.
How would branches look like?
We no longer have

0.1
0.2
0.5
...

But each version has a set of children and a set of parents (merges) ?

So hackage would no longer show

other versions: ... ... ...
but
childs:  branchX-0.3 branchY-0.4 branchZ-0.8
parents:  ?

On the other hand the more packages / branches are on hackage the more
work packagers have to do..

Marc
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Hackage and HaXml situation

2008-09-18 Thread Duncan Coutts
On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 15:32 -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
 Hi everyone,
 
 We've got a bit of a problem in the community regarding HaXml.  This has
 been brought up before, but never definitively resolved, and it's
 causing more and more trouble.
 
 Over at the HaXml homepage [1], it is stated that 1.13.3 is the most
 recent stable version of HaXml.  I believe that Malcolm Wallace, HaXml
 maintainer, has confirmed this.
 
 Over at the HaXml hackage page [2], it would appear as if 1.19.4 is the
 most recent stable version of HaXml.  There is no provision made to mark
 some versions as unstable, and to make 1.13.3 the default version
 downloaded from Hackage.

But there should be. I have a plan and I intend to implement it.

Basically for each package we have an optional suggested version
constraint. This would be used in the hackage website to direct people
to the 'current' version but most importantly it'd be used by
cabal-install and other cabal - native package conversion tools. It
wold be editable on the hackage website by the package author/maintainer
and probably other people with the role of managing the hackage
collection.

Cases like HaXml-1.13 - 1.19 (or a future stable version) or old-time
- time are also things that the platform might be able to help with in
future by managing the transition in a more coherent way rather than
what we have now where the transition is rather hap-hazard with half
using one and half the other.

Duncan

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Hackage and HaXml situation

2008-09-18 Thread John Goerzen
Marc Weber wrote:
 In your particular problem there is another way:
 Ask the distributors to ship both HaXmL versions..
 (Most systems will install one only by default (an update supersedes the
 older one :-( ) But most distributions do let you install two or more
 versions (?)

Yes, most distributions package only one at a time, and yes most could
package more than one.  Perhaps that would even work with HaXml.

BUT:

1) There is still significant end-user confusion

2) This approach doesn't scale once we start thinking of more packages

 I think the way to go is beeing able to represent all the work you've
 done.
 I'd like to add a pointer to vxml on hackage. But it's still way to
 unstable for a release.

See, I don't think that Hackage should discourage posting unstable code
-- just discourage posting code that is less stable than the previous
release.

I think there is very little code too unstable for release!  Release
early, release often.  I wrote my first ever Xlib client in C the other
day.  It's up at git://git.complete.org/ledmon.  My first ever patches
to xmobar are up at http://darcs.complete.org/xmobar.  Don't let
unstable scare you off from releasing.

 How would branches look like?
 We no longer have
 
 0.1
 0.2
 0.5
 ...
 
 But each version has a set of children and a set of parents (merges) ?

Simplest way to do this would be to define a boolean flag: stable or
unstable.  Similarities to Debian here.

More complex, you could let authors define branches.  The default branch
is presented, well, by default.  Others are visible.  Similarities to
Freshmeat here.

I don't know that this has to be terribly complex.  Just something to
get us out of the current situation and prevent it from happening again.

-- John
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