[arch-haskell] Arch Haskell Policy Proposal

[Don Stewart]

So, the big question for the team is what versions of packages we
support and where.

 1.  Should Arch track the newest version of every Hackage
     package, in [extra], [community] or AUR?  (the current behaviour, mostly)

OR

 2.  Should Arch provide the binary Haskell Platform set in [extra] and
     [community] (+ any other popular executables), and the newest version 
     of everything else that forms a coherent install plan, in AUR.

Most other distros are trying to support the first half of 2. That is,
they provide only what the Haskell Platform specifies (e.g. ghc 6.10.4 +
other things), in binary form. 

Currently, we have a mixture of 6.12 + ad hoc set of packages in binary
form, plus AUR is the latest of everything that I can construct a
coherent install plan for [1].

This is a pressing issue, since the move to 6.12 has broken a lot of
things -- mostly since the HP isn't moving to 6.12.x until 6.12.1 is
out, and thus many libraries and tools aren't ready to support 6.12.

This will likely break many things for a few weeks at least.

I propose the following:

   * Arch Linux supports precisely the Haskell Platform spec, in its
     binary repos.

   * AUR supports the latest version of a maximal install plan from
     Hackage, separately.

The consequence of this policy will be that no binary packages are
upgraded until the HP is updated. This should make vegai's work easier.

** It would also mean downgrading ghc 6.12 back to 6.10.4 **

If there is consensus, we can adopt this as policy, refer to it on the
website. Users who wish newer versions of things (such as ghc 6.12) can
use AUR packages.

-- Don

[1]: A 'coherent install plan' is the largest set of hackage packages
that build together, depending only on one unique version for each
library. (That is no QC1 + QC2. Pick one!)