[Haskell] ANNOUNCE: Cabal 1.4

[Duncan Coutts]

Cabal 1.4
=========

Cabal version 1.4 is out:
http://haskell.org/cabal/download.html

The user guide and API documentation are also available from the
download page.

You can also get it from hackage:
http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/Cabal


Release notes
=============

There are no huge new features in the Cabal library itself, though there
are a number of incremental improvements and lots of bug fixes. The main
new feature is that is supports a significantly improved version of
cabal-install.

You can see a summary of the changes in the change log:
http://haskell.org/cabal/release/latest/changelog

A few items in particular are changes in existing behaviour:

      * All .cabal files are treated as UTF-8 and must be valid
      * Stricter parsing for version strings, eg disallows "1.05"
      * Default prefix for --user installs is now $HOME/.cabal

Compatibility
-------------

We have tried to preserve compatibility with all packages that worked
with the Cabal-1.2.x series. That is, packages that can be built using
Cabal (including custom Setup.hs scripts) but not packages that directly
import and use the Cabal API. Packages that directly import and use the
Cabal api will need updating. This affects packages that build distro
packages for example, rpm debs etc.

Bugs and feature requests
-------------------------

This is an excellent opportunity to make sure your favourite bug or
feature request is properly described in our bug tracker:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/

To help us guide development priorities please add yourself to the
ticket's cc list and describe why that bug or feature is important to
you.

Credits
=======

On behalf of the Cabal hackers and the community generally I'd like to
thank the large number of people who have contributed patches during
this development series. Previously I was rather worried that we were
not getting enough contributors to fix bugs and do new feature
development, but now I'm very pleased.

Get involved
============

Of course there's still a lot to do! We have big plans for Cabal-2.0,
cabal-install and the Hackage website. So if you're interested in
helping out with this core infrastructure project then:

 * subscribe to the cabal-devel mailing list:
     http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel

 * grab the source:
     http://haskell.org/cabal/code.html

 * read the guide to the source code:
     http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/SourceGuide

 * take a look at our list of bugs and feature requests:
     http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/report/12
   especially the easy tickets:
     http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/report/13

Duncan