[Haskell-cafe] A little bit OT: Google as a global directory/resolver for cabalized packages?

[Dimitry Golubovsky]

If one tries to search Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=exposed-modules+version+filetype%3Acabal&btnG=Search

it returns URLs of all Google-indexed .cabal files (currently 7- just this few?)

So if one makes such a request from a program, then parses the resulting
HTML extracting <a> tags containing links ending with ".cabal", it
would result in a directory of .cabal files locations suitable for
furter processing. Similarly, if all locations of a particular package
need to be found, package name needs to be added to the query string.

Using Google API might be an alternative, but it returns only up to 10
results (per their docs) which might be enough to find all mirrors of
a single package, but not the whole list of available packages.

Publishing in such a directory might be simple: just place one's
.cabal file in a place where Google can index it.

One weakness: too easy to spam.

Could this be a (cheap) way to set up package name -> URL resolution?

-- 
Dimitry Golubovsky

Anywhere on the Web