[Haskell-cafe] Idea for a tool

[Bas van Dijk]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 7:36 AM, Michael Snoyman <michael at snoyman.com> wrote:
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>

This would be a nice feature for the new hackage server:
http://sparky.haskell.org:8080

Bas