Advance notice that I'd like to make Cabal depend on parsec

[Bardur Arantsson]

On 03/15/2013 04:33 PM, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On Fri, 2013-03-15 at 05:19 +0100, Bardur Arantsson wrote:
>> On 03/14/2013 11:01 PM, Duncan Coutts wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2013-03-14 at 11:15 -0700, Jason Dagit wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Bardur Arantsson <spam at scientician.net>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 03/14/2013 03:53 PM, Duncan Coutts wrote:
>>>>>> Hi folks,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Why did I choose parsec? Practicality dictates that I can only use
>>>>>> things in the core libraries, and the nearest thing we have to that is
>>>>>> the parser lib that is in the HP. I tried to use happy but I could not
>>>>>> construct a grammar/lexer combo to handle the layout (also, happy is not
>>>>>> exactly known for its great error messages).
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Just thinking out loud here, but what about ditching the current format
>>>>> for something that's simpler to parse/generate? Like, say, JSON?
>>>
>>> Of course .cabal files are mainly written by humans, not machines, so we
>>> should optimise for them.
>>
>> I though we were mostly talking about InstalledPackageInfo. That could
>> be in $EASILY_PARSEABLE_FORMAT without really breaking anything, right?
> 
> In principle it could be any format. But it is a format specified in the
> Cabal spec, and shared between all the Haskell implementations. Unless
> there's a compelling reason to change all that, I'd rather not.
> 

Not having GHC core depend on parsec(*) sounds like a compelling reason
to me...?

(*) And the potential ensuing Cabal hell when a package depends on
anything in GHC.*.