[Haskell] HaskellForge

[Isaac Jones]

I did have a fantasy about how hackage might host projects some day,
but it's definitely a Hackage-2.0 thing.  Here's the idea:

- every uploaded package is unpacked and made into a darcs repository

  (or maybe you just provide Hackage a darcs URL w/ a cabal file at
  the top, and hackage goes and fetches the already existing
  repository)

- after that, the project owner could upload or push patches, or
  instruct hackage to pull a tag or patch or something.

- also, "outsiders" could submit darcs patches to hackage on a
  per-project basis, and hackage would collect those patches, and even
  offer them to anyone who wants to see them.  The project owner could
  approve or ignore or reject a patch as she sees fit.

- People could vote on patches, though, so if everyone wants a bugfix
  that the project owner thinks is too ugly, then they can vote on a
  patch or set of patches and hackage would automatically start
  offering a branch with the patches in it.

  The owner would probably have the option to kill branches / forks,
  but this way, if a maintainer disappeared (as sometimes happens
  around here), then people could still work with the project, there
  would be a de-facto latest version until someone took over
  maintainership from the project owner.

On another topic, there has been some discussion about using gforge or
something for haskell projects, but the general consensus was
something like:

- people probably wouldn't use it, there's already sourceforge if they
  wanted to use something like that

- all people have to do is email the maintainer of the web page to get
  their tools listed on haskell.org/libraries

I had a dissenting opinion, I think it would be a good thing, but I
don't know if people would use it or not.

The discussion was in part captured here (thanks Shae!):
http://www.scannedinavian.org/AvianWiki/HaskellProjects

There was even a prototype at gforge.ScannedInAvian.org but it seems
to be gone.


peace,

  isaac