Why is there a cabal file at all?

[Marc Weber]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 01:39:08AM +0000, Neil Mitchell wrote:
> Hi Marc,
> 
> [Snip]
> 
> >Any ideas, comments?
> >
> >Anyone out there who wants to join and help implementing this idea?
> 
> I'd ask why there is a Setup.hs file at all, a nice textual
> declarative form seems much more sensible.

Thus you are asking why there is support for hooks at all?
Sorry I can't follow you, sir!

You can encode everything
> in Haskell, but you probably shouldn't...

> First off, its harder to read, harder to parse (unless you happen to
> be a Haskell compiler)
Aeh.. Why are you programming in haskell, than?
Again I can't follow..
If this is hard to parse, would you mind pointing me to the lines you
had real troubl understanding them?

Or do you think its hard to read / use for total haskell beginners?

If so its no problem to also provide a function as cabal does has it:

replace the line

	handle congfig targets
by
	handleFromSimpleTextFile
and every one will be happy?

and just not as straight forward. Should you be
> able to pick which library version you want based on the day of the
> week? 
> Should your package name be allowed to be a random string which
> changes each time?
Why not ? If somewody likes to?
But the library won't be used than..
He can do this now, too. He/ she has to provide a different cabal file each
day.. This shouldn't be any problem using php name: <?=randomString?>

How do you protect people from using libs with rubbish code?
I can't do anything moro than quote yourself:

"
I would demand at the very least a real name, email address - but
really, in an online world those things are nearly useless. I guess
the only thing to do is to trust that people who have learnt enough
about monads and IO to hijack Haskell things probably realise how cool
Haskell is...
" (quoted from
   http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2007-January/006662.html)

I think this might apply here, too ;) If you don't unerstand how I think this
applies aske again.

But I think its not much effort convincing me to write simple text files ;)

I adbmit that I plan to use this packaging system not just for haskell, but
also for compiling microcontroller code etc.. I like Makefiles but I also hate
them.. Thus textfiles justd wouldn't be expressive enough for my needs.

Thanks
	Marc