Cabal and installing packages.

[Keean Schupke]

Yes thats the kind of thing I was thinking... but it has a few things 
missing:

#!/bin/sh

echo "wget http://packages.haskell.org/$@"
echo "tar -zxvf $@.tgz"
echo "cd $@"
echo "./Setup.lhs configure"
echo "./Setup.lhs build"
echo "./Setup.lhs install"

Fetching a list of mirrors CPAN style would be useful, and having it select a 
default mirror by TLD would save a lot of unnecessary network traffic.

Dependancy resolution is also missing (and requires recursive fetch/install),
apperently Cabal includes dependancy info... so it is just a matter of reading
it out of the package and doing the recursion.

Also a section like gentoo's make.conf (for ebuilds) where local options can
be set in a file (for things like optimisation flags etc)...

I would have thought a little Haskell binary would be ideal for this...

As for the server including features like listing packages and searching packages
seems like a good idea... Has anyone considered using an application interface
like SOAP (or something else) for the server, so that it can easily be driven 
from a command-line (or GUI) client - rather than just a web site?

	Keean.


Isaac Jones wrote:

>Indeed it has always been the plan to have both:
>http://www.haskell.org/cabal/proposal/a818.html
>
>And the program to generate a Debian package from a Cabal package is
>already implemented and in use (thanks, John Goerzen!)
>
>Of course, the client isn't the hard part, the server / database is,
>and that's under way, but it's just a prototype now:
>
>http://www.scannedinavian.org/cgi-bin/hackage/hackage
>
>peace,
>
>  isaac
>  
>