[Haskell-cafe] Hoogle and Network.Socket

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

I don't want to get in to a platform war (which I certainly don't have
time to engage in - plus its not nearly as much fun over email vs
sitting in a pub with some beer having a platform war). Martijn's
thoughts of +windows, +unix, +os is exactly right, I'm happy to let
users say "oh, please show me these packages", but there are
trade-offs in Hoogle design. If someone has some clear viewpoint on
the answers, I'd love to hear them. The three problems are:

1) What packages should Hoogle search by default? All of hackage? The
base libraries? Only the packages a user has installed? Only packages
that make it in to the Haskell Platform?

2) What groups of packages should Hoogle have available? Each package
individually? All packages which compile on Windows? All packages by a
certain author? All packages whose minor version number is even?

3) What UI should Hoogle show? Should there be checkboxes for each
os's package? Should their be a checkbox for each compiler/version?
Should their be no UI but some documentation?

And the trade offs are:

1) The packages have to be divided under sensible and clear lines - I
don't want to (and shouldn't) arbitrate divisions like "good" or
"popular".

2) The more packages you search, the less relevant the results will be.

3) The fewer packages you search, the more chance that you miss something.

4) The more UI that is added the more confusing things get.

5) My development time for Hoogle derives Bounded, Finite and
increasingly also derives Small.

Thoughts and suggestions welcome. I've set up a wiki page to track
peoples thoughts, so if you want to comment on the list it might be
best to summarise your final thoughts on the page too:
http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hoogle/Packages

Thanks

Neil

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:38 AM, Thomas DuBuisson
<thomas.dubuisson at gmail.com> wrote:
> John A. De Goes:
>> I think the (valid) concern is that too many people are choosing
>> platform-specific packages when there are alternatives available
>> (albeit not as convenient in some cases), and this really hurts the
>> Windows community because Windows is so radically different from all
>> the other operating systems.
>
> Its apparent that Neil has the legitimate concern of general purpose
> libraries becoming or being built on platform specific pieces - a
> situation I also want to avoid seeing as I work on three different
> platforms.  The point I'm trying to make is that some programs and
> libraries perform platform specific taskes and that's ok - there is no
> loss of portability because it wouldn't make sense to port them
> anyway.  Examples include Debian/Arch packaging, X.org bindings /
> Window Managers, Xen system call bindings, etc.
>
> Tom
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