Haskell Libraries Wishlist

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 21:12, Shae Matijs Erisson wrote:
> Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak at cse.unsw.edu.au> writes:
> 
> > (a) The current haskell.org/libraries/ page.
> >   Pros: we have got it
> >   Cons: developers cannot alter it themselves; we know it doesn't work
> > (b) The wiki page
> >   Pros: Easy to edit for everybody; exists already
> >   Cons: Developers need to use the wiki (not hard, but probably a hurdle
> >     for those who have never done it); free form style of wiki is more
> >     work to edit and a common format must be maintained by convention
> > (d) Develop a user-updateable database for haskell.org
> >   Pros: custom made; easy to edit, little work to keep entries up to 
> >     date
> >   Cons: Somebody has to implement it; it's been proposed before and not 
> >     done
> 
> What about a compromise like:
> Library and application authors put the Cabal file for their lib or app on the
> wiki, and add CategoryLibrary or CategoryApplication to the bottom of their
> page so that another program can suck those Cabal descriptions out of the wiki
> and into a user-friendly sexy-looking database?
> 
> Then you have a standard format (cabal), user updates (wiki), and the nice
> search and display that something like WASH or Halipeto plus HaskellDB can give
> you, all without manual intervention by a 'libraries admin'.

Sure.  Sucking information of the wiki once the Cabal infrastructure can
make use of it or there is some DB backend that supports flexible
searching is perfectly fine.  Nevertheless, we need to start with the
wiki.

Cheers,
Manuel