package description fields

[Isaac Jones]

Ross Paterson <ross at soi.city.ac.uk> writes:

> Is there any difference between Homepage and Package-Url?  Can one of
> them be removed?

I think package-url is meant to be the "click here to download the
cabal-ized tarball of this very package" and homepage is meant to be
the homepage.  package-url is for Hackage, and homepage is for human
consumption.  I think package-url will end up being manditory (if you
want to get your tool into hackage).

> How about moving Build-Depends to the package level (and maybe calling
> it Depends)?

That makes sense.

> Is it sufficient to put License: BSD3 in the package description?
> Or should License-File be mandatory, and License just an optional
> hint?

I don't really want to force people to Do the Right Thing necessarily,
I just want to force them to think about a license before they put
something in Hackage.

> (Some people seem to think they should put a copy of the entire licence
> in each source file. :-)

I once had an open-source project pulled out from under me and made
closed source.  So I'm a bit obsessive about it.

> It doesn't seem to be very useful to have both a library and executables
> that use it in the same package (at least with the meaning implemented
> for GHC).  One has to list all the library modules again under each
> executable.

Which field are you referring to here?  buildDepends?  I think I
agree.

peace,

  isaac