[Haskell-cafe] Idea for a tool

[Michael Snoyman]

Hi all,

I saw a quote from Eric Kow via Neil Mitchell[1] that we don't spend
enough time writing tools. Well, I've decided that the most annoying
part of package maintainership right now is staying on top of new
versions of dependencies. We essentially have two options right now:

* Follow the PVP and put an upper bound on all dependencies, and
people will be upset when your package only works with the old version
of the dependency.
* Skip the upper bound, and risk having your code break when there's a
new version.

I have an idea for a tool: you give it a list of packages you
maintain, or even better yet, you give it your email address and it
gets that list automatically. Then is looks through all your
dependencies and sees if you have any upper bounds preventing newer
versions from being used. Bonus points for making it a web service
that just gives you an RSS feed.

If anyone's interested in writing a tool like that, let me know.
Otherwise, next time I'm twiddling my thumbs I'll try to throw it
together. I've never dealt directly with the Cabal library, but
there's a first time for everything. If someone else wants to write
that tool and wants help sticking a web service on it, let me know.

Michael

[1] http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2010/10/enhanced-cabal-sdist.html