[Haskell-cafe] ANN: Reverse Dependencies in Hackage (demo)

[Roel van Dijk]

Hello,

I have implemented reverse dependencies in Hackage. You can play with
the demo here:

http://bifunctor.homelinux.net/~roel/hackage

I already send a message to Haskell-Cafe, but I made a few changes and
would like some feedback. You can sort the tables of reverse
dependencies by clicking on the column headers. Large tables (base or
the total overview) might take some time. Sorting is done client-side
with a bit of JavaScript.

I added a link to an overview of the reverse dependencies of every
package in hackage. It is sorted by the total number of rev. deps by
default, so the most dependent-on packages (within hackage) are at the
top. In the future such a list might be expanded with other
information, like the download count.

Things I would like feedback on:
- Rev. deps overview for all packages; is it useful?
- If you look at the reverse dependencies for a package like digest
you'll see a list of packages that depend on digest. Next to the names
of the packages that depend on digest are their respective reverse
dependencies. The idea is that you can see which are the most
"important" (for some value of important) packages that depend on
digest. Is that useful?
- Is this the best way to present the information?

Currently I am working on a patch for the new hackage-server.

Regards,
Roel