[Haskell-cafe] Package metadata format - notes from discussion

[Ivan Lazar Miljenovic]

On 3 November 2016 at 13:20, Patrick Pelletier <code at funwithsoftware.org> wrote:
> One impression I've gotten (although I have not looked into this closely) is
> that the API for cabal-the-library does not seem to be very stable.  From
> looking at the version history of the standalone-haddock tool, it appears
> that it has to change frequently for new versions of cabal, and only
> supports one version of cabal at a time.  (And it currently isn't up-to-date
> with the latest cabal.)  This makes it difficult to use, because my cabal is
> probably too old or too new.

I believe that any version of Cabal can parse files produced for any
older versions of Cabal.  The API hasn't changed that much that I'm
familiar with (I've had to tweak some code that deals with it every
time there's a new version, but it's usually not too bad, more that
they keep changing where information about PackageDB is found).

>
> --Patrick
>
>
> On 11/2/16 10:05 AM, Harendra Kumar wrote:
>
> Peter,
>
> My point was to make it easier for any new tool writers to choose the same
> format over something entirely new, there are some examples in the notes. I
> have not investigated it in detail but there must be some reason why the
> cabal format is not being adopted or is not likely to be adopted by new
> tools describing package metadata; I was thinking the format being seen as
> tightly attached to cabal and not usable in general might be one reason. Is
> it likely to be seen as an independent format if it has a spec describing it
> and an independent parsing library? Or is it some entirely different reason
> altogether? Or maybe its not worth caring about whether all tools use the
> same language for metadata, I might be the only one?
>
> -harendra
>
> On 2 November 2016 at 21:46, Peter Simons <simons at nospf.cryp.to> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Harendra,
>>
>>  > It might help if the [Cabal] parser is modularized and detached from
>>  > the cabal tool itself so that it can be used independently by any
>>  > other tools wishing to do so.
>>
>> I'm not quite sure how to interpret that statement. The parser for the
>> Cabal format is quite modular and re-usable already and has been available
>> in the Cabal library for years:
>>
>>
>> http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Cabal-1.24.0.0/docs/Distribution-PackageDescription-Parse.html
>>
>> Am I missing something?
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Peter
>>
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>
>
>
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-- 
Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
Ivan.Miljenovic at gmail.com
http://IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com