[Haskell-Cafe] Add "number of downloads" to hackageDB page?

[Duncan Coutts]

On Sun, 2008-01-13 at 23:18 +0100, Hugh Perkins wrote:
> I seem to remember a thread about this a while back actually, but...
> 
> Any chance of adding the number of downloads to the hackageDB page?
> 
> For those packages that are included in ghc, hugs etc, perhaps add a
> green tick with "included in ghc", "included in hugs", etc?
> 
> That way it should be relatively easier to know for newbies which
> packages are more or less mature/stable.

That is indeed the highest priority for hackage at the moment, that is,
getting enough information onto the hackage pages for people to make
sensible decisions about what packages to choose. This is also closely
related to measuring package QA, ie what packages work on what
platforms.

> Optional: perhaps include a tick-box/dropdown to only show packages
> with more than a certain (configurable) number of downloads?

There are loads of great ideas like these floating around and we've had
a few discussions on what the most important ones are and how to go
about implementing them.

The block to progress is enough people with enough time to actually
implement these suggestions. So let me take this opportunity to invite
everyone who is interested in improving hackage to speak up. 

If you're interested you should:
      * Join the cabal-devel mailing list
      * Take a look at the feature requests in the hackage trac and make
        sure all your suggestions are properly documented
      * Post to cabal-devel to say that you're interested and we can
        discuss things in more detail and suggest where to start and
        what approach to take

http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage


At the moment I am particularly keen on the idea of getting
cabal-install to send build reports back to the hackage server and then
using that information to show what packages work on what platforms
(where platform is the os, compiler version etc etc). So if someone is
interested in helping with that then do get in touch.

Duncan