[arch-haskell] installing multiple versions of the same package

[Xyne]

Nicolas Pouillard wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Nov 2010 09:59:54 +0100, Rémy Oudompheng <remyoudompheng at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2010/11/8 Magnus Therning <magnus at therning.org> wrote:
> > > On 08/11/10 19:51, Xyne wrote:
> > >> Magnus Therning wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>> I suggest adding them to a group named "haskell-platform" too.
> > >>>
> > >>> With or without having a haskell-platform package?
> > >>
> > >> Packages and groups should never have the same name. If you think a package
> > >> by that name would make more sense then forget I mentioned using a group.
> > >
> > > I personally think a (meta-) package is better than a group.  I've never
> > > really understood groups.  That is, I understand perfectly how they
> > > work, but
> > > I don't understand the reason for having them.
> > 
> > I see groups as a user-friendly manner of presenting, sorting,
> > installing packages, while meta-packages are friendlier to developers
> > and package managers (you can use a meta-package as dependency). I
> > don't think we are going to have depends=(haskell-platform) anywhere,
> > since all PKGBUILDs we have rely on the individual libraries.
> 
> If there is so little difference, then I'm for the meta-package solution.

If I ever get around to implementing true optdeps [1] myself, them metapackages
will be truly useful. Until then, they leave the user with no real
configuration other than patching the package every time it's upgraded..

[1] http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2010-October/011695.html
(It's one of my many explanations of how a relatively simple change could
fundamentally improve the situation and reduce overall complexity.)