[Haskell] ANNOUNCE: Haskell Communities & Activities Report (10thed., June 2006)

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

I believe that this is just what HackageDB is for (described in HCAR
p20).   I have no idea of how complete Hackage is, thus far, though.

Simon

| so, the best media will be some sort of online database, like CPAN.
| it should
| 
| - have enough fields to allow any required searches - by date of
| publication, category, author
| - automatically extracts this information from cabal files
| - support various entry types, such as individuals, papers and all
| other mentioned in current HCAR
| - allow anyone to add new entries, with or without uploading actual
| implementations
| 
| this database should allow to find information about all
| the new/updated packages for last week, making possible automatic
| generation of this HWN part. in this case to announce his work,
| developer should just describe it at this server, and then
| 
| 1) automatic announcement for this mail list will be generated
| 2) next week HWN will automatically include description of this
package
| 3) anyone interested to see new/updated packages for last year or last
| month can run appropriate query on this server site
| 4) anyone who want to see full list of described packages or list
| split by categories can do it again using this site interface
| 
| the good news is what we already have this database - yes, it's HCAR
| itself, what is internally keeps as database, afaik. it has many
| fields required, although we should add more following the .cabal
| file structure. so we can start this online database just
| now. the only thing required is the web interface for
| editing/searching data
| 
| the next important things will be keeping history of updates
| (especially version updates to allow search for libraries whose major
| version was updated during, for example, last 6 months); adding
| "subscription to package" that allows to be warned via email when
| libraries i interested are updated; interaction with Hackage