[Haskell-cafe] Handling absent maintainers

[Alexander Dunlap]

One issue that comes up is that when you fork a package, data can no
longer be freely exchanged between libraries using the original
package's datatypes and libraries using the forked package's
datatypes. Something that might help here is the concept of
"extension" or "friend" packages or modules: packages or modules that
could break through to access concrete representations of abstract
datatypes or classes. The advantage would be that in many cases,
instead of forking a package, you could make the necessary changes
through a tightly-coupled but separately-maintained friend package
while still maintaining compatibility with the original package.

This wouldn't help for the problem of maintaining a package that
wouldn't compile. That might be helped by something like a "provides"
or "equivalent" field, where Cabal could be informed that a new
package should be treated as satisfying a dependency on a different
package.

Alex

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:36 PM, Mark Wotton <mwotton at gmail.com> wrote:
> That works fine for my own stuff, but I'd like it to work for people
> using my software that relies on those packages.
>
> mark
>
> On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Roman Beslik <beroal at ukr.net> wrote:
>>  I patch broken packages in my local repository. I increment a version so
>> the local repository get a precedence over the Hackage.
>>
>> On 16.07.10 03:54, Mark Wotton wrote:
>>>
>>> 2. run my own hackage server and tell my users to use that instead.
>>
>> --
>> Best regards,
>>  Roman Beslik.
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
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