Your vision for the future of Cabal subsystems

[sebright2]

Here are my main goals for the dependency solver:

- Finish implementing per-component dependency solving: https://github.com/haskell/cabal/issues/4087
- Improve performance in the case where there are many dependencies, especially setup and build tool dependencies, but not many conflicts. It would solve issues like https://github.com/haskell/cabal/issues/6309 and make freeze files more useful.
- Improve error messages when there is no solution. In simple cases, we might be able to use heuristics (or even an LLM as Artem suggested) to highlight the most important conflicts or suggest solutions. I'd also like the message to focus more on the final conflict set than on the first conflicts encountered, which would help in more complex cases.
- Try to find better solutions or make solutions more stable. The solver could also give suggestions on how to improve the solution, such as how to loosen constraints in order to avoid deprecated versions.
- Improve documentation of the algorithm.

-Kristen

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'd like to ask the people who have been working, are involved or are
> dependent on any subsystem of the Cabal project to take some time and think
> about what they would like to see for the future. More directly, I would
> like to ask you to dream about the future. Don't concern yourself with
> implementation, energy or resources, but rather about the direction, and
> the shape of the subsystems that you have a stake in.
> Things like the solver, the UX of such and such sub-command, performance of
> a certain use-case, targeting a certain demographic, a change in how we get
> feedback from end-users…
> 
> This will help us with coming up with a product vision that will serve as a
> backbone for the immediate and near-future development of cabal. I
> understand most of us do this in our free time, but that does not make us
> illegitimate to wish for better things, especially when we are involved in
> the long run.
> 
> See you all on Matrix and during our bi-monthly meeting.
> 
> Cheers,
> Hécate