Validating with Haddock

[Mateusz Kowalczyk]

On 28/12/13 16:53, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I'm trying to validate HEAD and I care that Haddock is built alongside
> it (so --no-haddock is not an option). I get the following errors listed
> at the bottom of this e-mail. How can I validate so that it all builds?
> 
> From what I understand, to validate I should:
> * Have a stable compiler in my PATH (7.6.3)
> * go to top level directory
> * run ‘sh validate’
> 
> Am I missing steps?
> 
> == Start post-build package check
> Timestamp 2013-12-28 05:00:55 UTC for
> /home/shana/.ghc/i386-linux-7.7.20131227/package.conf.d/package.cache
> Timestamp 2013-12-28 05:00:55 UTC for
> /home/shana/.ghc/i386-linux-7.7.20131227/package.conf.d (same as cache)
> using cache:
> /home/shana/.ghc/i386-linux-7.7.20131227/package.conf.d/package.cache
> Timestamp 2013-12-28 05:22:27 UTC for
> /home/shana/programming/ghc/inplace/lib/package.conf.d/package.cache
> Timestamp 2013-12-28 05:22:27 UTC for
> /home/shana/programming/ghc/inplace/lib/package.conf.d (same as cache)
> using cache:
> /home/shana/programming/ghc/inplace/lib/package.conf.d/package.cache
> There are problems in package xhtml-3000.2.1:
>   dependency "base-4.7.0.0-578628bf142f9304d05ce5581b5f8d76" doesn't exist
> There are problems in package ghc-paths-0.1.0.9:
>   dependency "base-4.7.0.0-578628bf142f9304d05ce5581b5f8d76" doesn't exist
> 
> The following packages are broken, either because they have a problem
> listed above, or because they depend on a broken package.
> xhtml-3000.2.1
> ghc-paths-0.1.0.9
> 

Ping. I need GHC to validate. Here's what I'm trying to achieve: as you
might know, I worked on Haddock over summer, rewriting the whole parser,
adding tests, fixing bugs, adding features. As Haddock ships with GHC
however (and is technically a GHC HQ package), we can not merge it
without making sure that GHC can build and validate with the changes.

This has been a problem for me and Simon Hengel for quite a while. We
now have a branch with preliminary changes on
https://github.com/sol/haddock/tree/new-parser . We can not even begin
to try to merge the new features if the parser they are built upon is
not merged. With the recent calls to push out a 7.8 release candidate, I
think we're running out of time to get this in (or is it too late
already?). It is not the first time we've been asking for help here!

Can someone say what are the steps I should take to get an OK from the
GHC HQ that we can push new-parser onto master? If we miss 7.8, the next
opportunity will be 7.10, because to get a new Haddock version you also
need a new compiler, which people only get during stable releases.
There's still a lot of work to be done on Haddock and I think it's
understandable that I don't want to do work on what effectively is an
‘outdated version’. I'm fine with changes being rejected because they
are deemed not good enough for some specific reason, but I'd hate the
changes to not make it because I can't get a confirmation from GHC HQ
that it's safe to do so.

Thanks, hope to hear from someone soon.

-- 
Mateusz K.