[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: Cabal-1.6.0.2 and cabal-install-0.6.2

[Duncan Coutts]

I'm pleased to announce point-releases of the Cabal library and the
cabal-install command line tool.

If you are already using cabal-install then you can upgrade both using:

  $ cabal update  
  $ cabal install Cabal cabal-install

New users you can get it from:

  http://haskell.org/cabal/download.html

For users on unix systems there is a source tarball with a bootstrap
script. For users on Windows systems there is a pre-compiled cabal.exe.


Release notes
=============

Cabal-1.6.0.2
-------------

This is a point-release in the stable 1.6.x series. It is expected that
this release will be included with ghc-6.10.2. It has a number of fixes
and minor improvements.

The most noticeable change is that Cabal now checks at configure time
that C libraries and header files are available. This is known to break
a small number of packages. The maintainers of these packages have been
notified.

Changes since 1.6.0.1:
      * New configure-time check for C headers and libraries
      * Added language extensions present in ghc-6.10
      * Added support for NamedFieldPuns extension in ghc-6.8
      * Fix in configure step for ghc-6.6 on Windows
      * Fix warnings in Path_pkgname.hs module on Windows
      * Fix for exotic flags in ld-options field
      * Fix for using pkg-config in a package with a lib and an
        executable
      * Fix for building haddock docs for exes that use the Paths module
      * Fix for installing header files in subdirectories
      * Fix for the case of building profiling libs but not ordinary
        libs
      * Fix read-only attribute of installed files on Windows
      * Ignore ghc -threaded flag when profiling in ghc-6.8 and older


cabal-install-0.6.2
-------------------

This release contains a number of incremental improvements, including
some new features.

We expect to do another 0.6.x release in the not too distant future
focusing on improvements in the way package dependencies are selected.

Changes since 0.6.0:
      * The upgrade command has been disabled in this release
      * The configure and install commands now have consistent behaviour
      * Reduce the tendency to re-install already existing packages
      * The --constraint= flag now works for the install command
      * New --preference= flag for soft constraints / version
        preferences
      * Improved bootstrap.sh script, smarter and better error checking
      * New cabal info command to display detailed info on packages
      * New cabal unpack command to download and untar a package
      * HTTP-4000 package required, should fix bugs with http proxies
      * Now works with authenticated proxies.
      * On Windows can now override the proxy setting using an env var
      * Fix compatibility with config files generated by older versions
      * Warn if the hackage package list is very old
      * More helpful --help output, mention config file and examples
      * Better documentation in ~/.cabal/config file
      * Improved command line interface for logging and build reporting
      * Minor improvements to some messages

Changes since 0.5.2:
      * Constraint solver can now cope with base 3 and base 4
      * Allow use of package version preferences from hackage index
      * More detailed output from cabal install --dry-run -v
      * Improved bootstrap.sh

Bugs and feature requests
=========================

This is an excellent opportunity to make sure your favourite bug or
feature request is properly described in our bug tracker:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/

To help us guide development priorities please add yourself to the
ticket's cc list and describe why that bug or feature is important to
you.

Credits
=======

On behalf of the Cabal hackers and the community generally I'd like to
thank the people who have contributed patches for these releases:

      * Gleb Alexeyev
      * Samuel Bronson
      * Thomas Schilling
      * Ganesh Sittampalam
      * Andrea Vezzosi

Get involved
============

There's still a lot to do! We have big plans for Cabal-2.0,
cabal-install and the Hackage website. So if you're interested in
helping out with this core infrastructure project then:

 * subscribe to the cabal-devel mailing list:
     http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel

 * grab the source:
     http://haskell.org/cabal/code.html

 * read the guide to the source code:
     http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/SourceGuide

 * take a look at our list of bugs and feature requests:
     http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/report/12
   especially the easy tickets:
     http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/report/13

Duncan