Why is there a cabal file at all?

[Marc Weber]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 06:53:43AM -0800, Isaac Jones wrote:
> The original design of Cabal was more like Marc suggests.  There was
> only the Setup file and no .cabal file, and my hope was that we'd
> build an EDSL for package configurations.  Original cabal code would
> probably look like:
> 
> main = defaultMain defaultPackageDescription{ name="foo"
>                                             , synopsys="bar"}
> complex, so why not just start out with Haskell, which would give us
> room to grow :) But there are also lots of advantages to having the
> .cabal file.  Maybe someone can dig up the debate on the libraries
> mailing list from a few years back.
 
> Anyway, with the hooks interface, you can override just about all of
> cabal's behavior 

Sure I can. But I'd like to have it the other way round with a function:
readDescription from Cabal file..

Thanks for clarifying.

Isaac: I'm new to this project cabal/ hackage. So I need to know wether
this is still the right place to discuss this (because this descission
has been made some time ago and Cabal seems to move in a direction I
don't like (using text/ cabal file like configurations)

Or is the right thing to do fork and create another mailinglist if
anyone is interested, too?

Anyway it would be cool to put these kinds of "descission" having been
made long time ago somewhere on the cabal page for information why Cabal
is the way it is.

When I come up with something useful I'll post here again.

peace, thanks, .. ;)
Marc