[Haskell-cafe] Building/installing haskelldb and friends with ghc 6.10.1

[Laurent Giroud]

Hi Duncan,
thanks a lot for your answers.

>> however, haskell-hdbc insists on depending on version 1.0.1.
>
> That's because the haskelldb-hdbc depends on exactly HDBC ==1.0.1
>
> http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/haskelldb-hdbc
>
>> I haven't been able so far to find what configuration file to  
>> modify in order
>> for it to try to build with the latest Cabalized version (I admit I
>> didn't search much).
>
> If you want to update haskelldb-hdbc then just change the .cabal  
> file to
> adjust the version constraints on the HDBC package and fix any issues
> arising from the update (eg api changes).

Yes, I finally found that setting and tried to build it against  
hdbc-1.1.5 : it fails and fixing this code is far above my current  
capabilities so I wouldn't be able to update it myself yet.
This being said, I have found this http://darcs.haskell.org/haskelldb/driver-hdbc/haskelldb-hdbc.cabal 
  which would tend to indicate that someone has already updated  
haskelldb-hdbc to hdbc 1.1.4+. I assume the person(s) who did these  
changes has(have) not been able to push them into hackage yet.

I'll be trying to work with it. If I can get something out of it, I'll  
try to contact the last patches authors and discuss pushing that  
version to hackage.

> I'm sure the maintainers would appreciate your patches since they seem
> not to have any time to do the updates themselves.

I certainly understand that, I will make any patches of mine public as  
soon as I get something to work.

>> Are the databases interface for haskelldb still officially maintained
>> and where is this information available ?
>
> I would guess not. The .cabal file lists
> haskelldb-users at lists.sourceforge.net as the maintainer. You might  
> check
> the archives for signs of activity or send an email there.

I have subscribed to the list which seems utterly desert, I haven't  
contacted any past author though yet but will do so.

>> Is the information that this and that package are compatible (or not)
>> with ghc 6.8.x or 6.10.1 available somewhere without compiling first
>> hand the packages ?
>
> Yes. On the package page it lists build failures for ghc-6.8 and 6.10

Yes, thanks, I noticed that a few minutes after posting my initial  
mail :)

>> What would you recommend at this point : fix hsql, or haskelldb-hdbc
>> so it uses 1.1.5 instead of 1.1, try an alternative to haskelldb (are
>> there any ?) ?
>
> If you need the high level api provided by haskelldb then yes fix  
> it. If
> not then just use HDBC directly.

I will be trying the aforementioned "updated" version first, if it  
doesn't work, I'll definitely fix the existing one if that doesn't  
imply more than newbie level haskell skills.

The high level API and type safety provided by haskelldb are the  
reason why I want to experiment with it. My company has just begun to  
use the C# Entity Framework which notably allows C# programs to  
manipulate databases using LINQ constructs, and the comparison with  
haskelldb will probably be very interesting. I have no doubt that the  
environment provided by Microsoft is much more advanced and complete  
than what haskelldb can currently provide, yet I have hope that this  
will lead people here to at least keep an eye on haskell capabilities.

Thanks again for your anwsers !

Regards,
Laurent