[Haskell-cafe] How to determine correct dependency versions for a library?

Clark Gaebel cgaebel at uwaterloo.ca
Fri Nov 9 17:22:21 CET 2012


What I usually do is start out with dependencies listed like:

aeson ==0.6.*

and then, as your dependencies evolve, you either bump the version number:

aeson ==0.7.*

or, if you're willing to support multiple version, switch to a range:

aeson >=0.6 && <= 0.7

If someone uses a previous version of a library, and wants your library to
support it too (and, preferably, it works out of the box), they'll send a
pull request.

That's what works for me. Maybe you could use it as a starting point to
find what works for you!

  - Clark


On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 11:15 AM, Janek S. <fremenzone at poczta.onet.pl> wrote:

> Recently I started developing a Haskell library and I have a question
> about package dependencies.
> Right now when I need my project to depend on some other package I only
> specify the package name
> in cabal file and don't bother with providing the package version. This
> works because I am the
> only user of my library but I am aware that if the library were to be
> released on Hackage I would
> have to supply version numbers in the dependencies. The question is how to
> determine proper
> version numbers?
>
> I can be conservative and assume that version of libraries in my system
> are the minimum required
> ones. This is of course not a good solution, because my library might work
> with earlier versions
> but I don't know a way to check that. What is the best way to determine a
> minimal version of a
> package required by my library?
>
> I also don't see any sane way of determining maximum allowed versions for
> the dependencies, but
> looking at other packages I see that this is mostly ignored and package
> maintainers only supply
> lower versions. Is this correct approach?
>
> Janek
>
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