[Haskell-cafe] ghc6.8: hiding uninstalled package?

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

Magnus Therning wrote:
> This might seem like a silly question, but what's the reasoning behind 
> the following behaviour?
> 
> % ghc-pkg list dataenc
> /usr/lib/ghc-6.8.2/package.conf:
> % ghc --make -hide-package dataenc -isrc UT.hs
> ghc-6.8.2 : unknown package: dataenc
> 
> Hiding an uninstalled package doesn't seem to warrant failing compilation!

"I cannot find it, therefore I cannot hide it"? XD

The following is fairly widely accepted behaviour:

$ rm phd-thsies
rm: cannot remove `phd-thsies': No such file or directory

If a file is absent and you want it absent, is that an error?

(Now you might get into a long thread debating whether deletion is 
analogous to hiding...)

If I want to hide or delete something, and the computer can't find that 
something, it may be because I have a typo. If the computer remains 
silent about it, I fail to hide or delete the true thing. I want to 
delete phd-thesis, but I typed phd-thsies, and I appreciate the error 
report. If I fail to delete phd-thesis, at worst more people read it and 
be enlightened :) but if I fail to hide a package and I don't know about 
it, the ensuing problems will be much more mysterious.