cabal for ghc 6.8.2, package upgrade warnings, please?

[Claus Reinke]

assuming that ghc 6.8.2 is not too far away, is there
any chance of cabal becoming a bit friendlier wrt old
.cabal and Setup files, before that release?

you've heard me say before that i'd have preferred
a backwards compatibility module, but if that isn't
possible, couldn't cabal at least detect that a .cabal
file is probably outdated (==not obviously up to date),
and issue a warning with a helpful url? something like:

    $ runhaskell Setup configure

    *** warning: this .cabal/Setup file might be out of date;
    *** if you run into issues, please contact the
    *** package maintainer, and have a look at
    *** http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Upgrading_packages

    .. (either it works or you get errors here, but you
        already know something is not quite right, and
        what to do about it)

btw, i knew that page existed, but had quite a bit
of trouble finding it. shouldn't there be prominent
links to it from cabal and hackage home pages?

as in: concerning recent cabal updates (look here
first if you have trouble with old .cabal packages).
in the longer term, that could become the start of
a cabal/hackage faq section..

claus