[Haskell-beginners] Cabal: Upgrading to the latest version of library

[Rustom Mody]

On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 1:31 AM, Giovanni Tirloni <gtirloni at sysdroid.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Hugo Ferreira <hmf at inescporto.pt> wrote:
>>
>> I have used Ocaml + the GODI "package manager" and it seems work ok.
>> GODI allows one to identify newer packages, select those we want to
>> upgrade and recompiles any dependencies automatically.
>>
>>
> As a newcommer, I feel that this subject has already been discussed at
> length by the Haskell community and progress is being made.
>
> Two articles that I have been referred to in order to understand it better:
>
> http://www.vex.net/~trebla/haskell/sicp.xhtml#unsafeInterleave
>
> http://ivanmiljenovic.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/repeat-after-me-cabal-is-not-a-package-manager/
>
>
Thanks for those links.


> As a Fedora user, I'm relying on the Haskell SIG work and using the ghc-*
> RPM packages. When a given Hackage package has not been packaged in Fedora
> yet, I'm using cabal to supplement but I think that's sub-optimal (from a
> sysadmin perspective). I'm looking at ways to actually build my own RPMs
> following their standards. As it's mentioned in one of the article, someone
> has had the trouble to figure out which packages work best together.
>

I wonder if you could throw some light on this?
Say you just have to use the 'sub-optimal' solution and cabal install some
package foo.
Later it appears in the rpm list and you can yum install it.
How do you now cabal uninstall foo?



>
> I second Daniel's opinion that updates should be a conscious decision on
> the part of the developer. The kind of dependency problems exemplified are
> not restricted to cabal and apply as well to PHP's Pear, Perl's CPAN and
> others. What I usually see is that developers try to guarantee their
> packages will correctly work with a given set of dependencies and so they
> specify minimum and maximum versions of those as restrictions. Obviously,
> easing those restrictions would ensure it's easier to match package but who
> guarantees they'll work (i.e. no important API change) ?
>
> My own experience managing packages in PHP hosting environments tells me
> that, even though the package manager was happy to upgrade everything I
> told it to.. I would usually find the interfacing problems myself in the
> form of downtime. In that scenario, I would prefer both a package more
> strictly defined in terms of dependencies. In cabal/Haskell things won't
> even compile, which is good :-)
>
> Any, just 0.02 from a newbie.
>
> Giovanni
>
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