Test Cases for Configurations

[Thomas Schilling]

On 14 jun 2007, at 19.27, Duncan Coutts wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-06-14 at 11:18 +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
>> Thomas Schilling wrote:
>>
>>> it's still a little work to do, but I think I'll be able to try  
>>> and use
>>> Cabal configurations some time next week.  Do you guys have any  
>>> ideas
>>> what we could use as a good test case?
>>>
>>> The goal is to find out how well the current scheme applies to  
>>> actual
>>> use cases (and if there are serious performance problems to await).
>>
>> Some suggestions:
>>
>>   - the base package has a lot of goop in its Setup script, I  
>> really hope
>>     that all, or at least most, of it can be done using  
>> configurations
>>
>>   - we have a few packages that want to do conditional  
>> dependencies.  e.g.
>>     HGL wants to depend on either Win32 or X11.
>>
>>   - IIRC, gtk2hs has a complex structure that will need a lot of  
>> conditional
>>     stuff in its .cabal file.  Duncan will tell you more.
>
> Unfortunately there's still a lot of work before Gtk2Hs is ready to be
> cabalised. Cabal configurations is a major piece of the puzzle though.
> But sadly there are too many other bits before Gtk2Hs would be a
> suitable test case for configurations.
>
> A cut down model of Gtk2Hs might work though, ie a bunch of .cabal  
> files
> modelling the various bits of Gtk2Hs, just without any of the actual
> source code.
>
>>   - take a look at the old discussion on libraries at haskell.org;  
>> there were
>>     lots of use cases discussed there.
>
> Many related to fps/bytestring being included in the base package or
> not.

Is there some centralized documentation of these changes?  Or should  
I just browse through the mailing lists?  E.g., it looks like GHC  
doesn't have a .cabal file yet, so I'd have to manually translate to  
the Makefile, which I presume would be a major undertaking.  Same  
applies for gtk2hs, whose ugliness I had to experience earlier.

/ Thomas