[GHC] #11286: ghc-pkg library

[GHC]

#11286: ghc-pkg library
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           Reporter:  ezyang         |             Owner:
               Type:  feature        |            Status:  new
  request                            |
           Priority:  normal         |         Milestone:
          Component:  Package        |           Version:  7.11
  system                             |
           Keywords:                 |  Operating System:  Unknown/Multiple
       Architecture:                 |   Type of failure:  None/Unknown
  Unknown/Multiple                   |
          Test Case:                 |        Blocked By:
           Blocking:                 |   Related Tickets:
Differential Rev(s):                 |         Wiki Page:
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 On Twitter, Anthony Cowley was wondering why there was no GHC API
 functions for taking Cabal InstalledPackageInfos and turning them into GHC
 InstalledPackageInfos.
 https://twitter.com/a_cowley/status/680158885953564672

 No such interface exists: to keep GHC decoupled from Cabal, the GHC
 package representation is mediated solely by `ghc-pkg`, so the "correct"
 way to create a package config file, run `ghc-pkg` to load it into the GHC
 binary representation, and go from there.

 It seems like it would be convenient if `ghc-pkg` was libified, and so
 people who linked against GHC and Cabal could just directly do the
 conversion without going through `ghc-pkg`. It's unclear what the right
 interface is; ghc-pkg does a number of sanity checks and it's unclear if
 those should be libified too. Any such library also must be uploaded to
 Hackage, because if you want to link against a newer version of Cabal you
 have to rebuild the ghc-pkg library against the newest version of Cabal.

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Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/11286>
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