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

[Lemmih]

On 6/15/06, Bulat Ziganshin <bulat.ziganshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Lemmih,
>
> Thursday, June 15, 2006, 1:25:27 PM, you wrote:
>
> > HackageDB is only for keeping track of Cabal packages and that's how
> > it's gonna stay (with the possible exception of hosting documentation
> > and darcs repositories, etc). A separate user-editable community
> > report could then refer to packages on HackageDB.
>
> yes, now we returns to the reasons why i propose to create separate
> database from HCAR data. one possible distinction may be that HackageDB
> is for robots that need to automatically install packages required in
> the TRUSTED way, while HcarDB is for humans searching for information
> about any haskell-related activity
>
> just an example - i know about existence of XYZ library, but i'm not
> the author. i want to just describe it so that anyone can find info
> about this lib. can i go to HackageDB? i think no - it's only for
> authors that upload their libs there. using of unstructured wiki pages
> is bad - it don't allow to search on complex criteries, don't allow to
> track history, don't allow to automatically notify about new versions,
> don't allow to make automatic HWN reports and so on
>
> so i propose either to extend HackageDB to allow inclusion of
> descriptions without libs itself, inlusion of papers, individuals and
> so on, or develop new web database with such abilities.

A new web database is needed.

> we definitely need a libraries repository! but HackageDB on this
> moment contains only about 10 projects, mostly your own. why? lack of
> advertisement, or just because there are too many places where
> developer should register his library (maillist, hcar, wiki, hackage)?

It's most likely because cabal-get and cabal-put are really difficult
to install. Of course, this will change when the tools are distributed
with Cabal (which a paid hacker will be working on).
I believe that the mailing list, the community report, the wiki and
HackageDB all serve different needs. The mailing list is for
announcements, the report is for semi-formal listing, the wiki is for
casual listing and HackageDB is for automatic downloads. There is some
overlap but it's not a lot.

> i propose to search for the way that will allow to move information from
> HCAR and wiki pages to some web database, be it Hackage or new db.
> this should allow to create cpan-like database just now and don't wait
> while developers will grok advantages of HackageDB

We all want a neat, central package-database but few are willing to
take the first step. (:

-- 
Friendly,
  Lemmih