Release plans

[Duncan Coutts]

On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 08:23 +0000, Neil Mitchell wrote:
> Hi
> 
> >  You could still have a cabal-install binary in the Windows installer and
> >  not include the Cabal-1.4.x library that you built it against.
> 
> That sounds easiest, and should give all the cabal-install benefits to
> Windows users.

Not quite all. If a package specifies not build type or uses Custom then
we have to compile the Setup.hs using the installed Cabal lib. In theory
cabal-install can build it against an older version of the Cabal lib, in
practise it's not been tested much.

> >  Alternatively it'd be possible to include Cabal-1.4.x too and have it
> >  not exposed by default. That'd enable cabal-install to use it for any
> >  packages that use a custom Setup.hs without it being picked up by
> >  default by ghc --make or ghci.
> 
> Unless the API 100% stable, I'd be wary of supporting a not quite
> finished release on Cabal in something as major as GHC.

If it was a 1.4 release then it would have to be stable. We do follow
the package versioning policy.

> Upgrading Cabal is fairly easy, if people want to do it themselves.

We can make it just as easy to install cabal-install even if it didn't
come with this version of GHC.

> If Cabal supported darcs links, you could even imagine upgrading cabal
> with "cabal install cabal --from-darcs" - that would be wonderful!

It's an often requested feature, see ticket #58. Of course cabal-install
can install releases on hackage of Cabal and itself.

Duncan