[Haskell] base libraries

[Sven Panne]

Am Montag, 27. November 2006 15:47 schrieb Ian Lynagh:
> [...]
> So, I would like to through down the gauntlet to the community to make
> this happen! We have ambitions to make large steps in this direction at
> Hac 07 http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hac_2007 (but that shouldn't stop
> people who can't be there from working on it too, or people working on
> it before then!).

I have to admit that I didn't follow the development of Cabal-related tools 
very closely, so perhaps my concerns are already handled:

Given a normal Linux distribution, the *only* sensible way to 
install/remove/... any SW is not via some specialized tools like cabal-foo or 
hackage-bar, but via tools like rpm, apt-get, smart, ... and their related 
GUI frontends. Doing things behind the back of the native package manager 
will lead to trouble sooner or later, and many users will outright reject any 
other tool (for very good reasons). Another thing is that I fear duplication 
of features like e.g. package signing, handling installation sources, 
searching for new packages, notification of updates, etc. To give an example 
for my openSUSE 10.1: If one finds some interesting package repository on 
e.g.

  http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories

its URL can easily be added to YaST (the openSUSE package management GUI), 
perhaps importing some keys to trust in the future, and starting from that 
point, the packages from that repository are seamlessly integrated with the 
rest: One can search for new interesting packages, install/remove packages, 
get update notifications, etc. The right way for openSUSE (and probably every 
RPM-based distro) would be to set up some kind of Haskell repository, and 
there are even efforts into that direction.

I am sure that this has already been considered somehow, but could somebody be 
so kind to give a short explanation of the plans in this area? I think that 
the proposed tools should somehow be called from RPM .spec files, but I am 
missing the big picture...

Cheers,
   S.