Cabal and installing packages.

[Isaac Jones]

Keean Schupke <k.schupke at imperial.ac.uk> writes:

> 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"

Yeah, it's just for illustration purposes.

> 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.

I agree.  It's just a matter of someone doing it.  It's somewhat
dependent on how the Hackage site is laid out, so whoever decides to
pick up the ball and hack on it would have to coordinate with that
project.  If no one else gets around to it, I'll do it once Cabal is
"done".

> 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...

It should definitely be written in Haskell :)

> 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?

I like this idea too :)

peace,
  isaac