[Haskell-cafe] Hackage policy question

Duncan Coutts duncan.coutts at worc.ox.ac.uk
Wed Sep 10 06:07:54 EDT 2008


On Wed, 2008-09-10 at 10:26 +0100, Ross Paterson wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 10:59:17PM +0000, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> > The .tar.gz packages are pristine and must not change, however
> > the .cabal file that is kept in the hackage index could change and that
> > information will be reflected both in the hackage website and just as
> > importantly for tools like cabal-install. So not only could the
> > maintainer fix urls or whatever but also adjust dependencies in the
> > light of test results. Consider the analogy to pristine tarballs and
> > debian or gentoo meta-data files. The former never changes for a
> > particular version, but the meta-data can be adjusted as the
> > distributors see fit.
> 
> So if Debian or Gentoo etc repackage one of these packages in their
> distributions, what is the pristine tarball that they use?

They use the one and only pristine tarball. As for what meta-data they
choose, that's up to them, they have the choice of using the
original .cabal file in the .tar.gz or taking advantage of the updated
version.

Duncan



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