[arch-haskell] gitit status update and why are deps needed for binaries

[Bastien Traverse]

Hi all,

For anybody wondering about the status of gitit: it was removed from
[haskell-happstack] on April 7th because of dependency issues (feed
>=0.3.6 && <0.4, pandoc >=1.12.4 && <1.14); feed itself was removed
because depending on utf8-string < 1.0 which was updated in
[haskell-core] to 1-78 [1].

Pandoc is being watched carefully [2][3], but feed doesn't seem really
likely to be updated: its Hackage entry [4] points to a GitHub repo that
hasn't been updated in 18 months [5], and an issue asking support for
utf8-string 1.x is opened there since January 23 [6]. The related
discussion makes it clear that feed is leaning towards abandonware.

There is an issue open to have haskell-trustees intervene [7], and a
proposition to add it to Stackage [8]. So those are the one to watch
concerning gitit's fate.

A question related to the experience with Haskell on Arch: why do pandoc
and gitit *binaries* depends on so many haskell packages being
installed? It seems that Ubuntu [9] and Debian [10] do without
installing the whole Haskell platform and build dependencies (confirmed
in a Xubuntu 14.04 VM: only a few libraries are needed). GHC et al. take
up so much space (> 1GB) on my server I asked confirmation this was
normal on #haskell IRC!

What is the difference in Arch Haskell packaging that causes the need to
install all the build depends to solely get the binaries?

Thanks
Bastien


[1]
https://github.com/tensor5/haskell-happstack/commit/12356dafcca432ba33fbaa6a75ee9bfc08f0314f
[2] https://github.com/archhaskell/habs/issues/179
[3] https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/arch-haskell/2015-April/004819.html
[4] https://hackage.haskell.org/package/feed
[5] https://github.com/sof/
[6] https://github.com/sof/feed/issues/9
[7] https://github.com/haskell-infra/hackage-trustees/issues/12
[8] https://github.com/sof/feed/issues/9#issuecomment-89334563
[9] http://packages.ubuntu.com/vivid/gitit
[10] https://packages.debian.org/jessie/gitit