[Haskell-cafe] Ticking time bomb

[Ramana Kumar]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 8:16 AM, Ketil Malde <ketil at malde.org> wrote:

>
> Ertugrul Söylemez <es at ertes.de> writes:
>
> >     People are using Hackage!
>
> +1. And I keep telling people to use it.  Sure, it'd be better if they
> used .debs, .rpms, or whatever goes on Mac and Windows.  But that would
> mean I would need to build those packages, including maintaining systems
> with the respective OSes.  I haven't even managed to do it for the
> systems I do use.
>

Some people seem to have been confused that by suggesting that cabal is not
a package manager, I was suggesting not to use Hackage or cabal at all, or
not to bother signing packages.
To be clear, I am for the following:

   - Using Hackage (for storing packages, searching online, downloading to
   create OS packages)
   - Using cabal (as a package developer, for testing/creating/uploading
   packages)
   - Signing packages on Hackage - this is important for security, and I
   don't want to detract further from the discussion about how to do it.

What I am against is:

   - Using cabal to "install" packages and generally as a package manager
   (e.g. try to use it to delete or upgrade packages).

This often ends in tears, because that is not cabal's job and it doesn't do
it well! Rather, you should help whoever is making packages for your OS (or
start doing this) by packaging the existing "cabal packages" on Hackage as
proper OS packages suitable for install/upgrade/remove etc. This can be
largely automated, and the main headaches come from dependency issues,
which are a separate problem on Hackage (and which Stackage is aiming to
alleviate).
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