patch applied (packages/regex-base): Make setup script compileagain after recent Cabal changes

[Thomas Schilling]

On Sat, 2007-09-01 at 14:39 +0100, Claus Reinke wrote:
> [subject taken from cvs-libraries@; discussion directed to libraries@]
> 
> does anyone else feel that there is something wrong in haskell library
> land? i'm picking on cabal here as one of  "the usual suspects", but it 
> seems to have become the rule that otherwise stable code has to be 
> fixed every so often, to accomodate new compiler versions, new 
> library dependency versions, new cabal versions, new xyz versions,..
> 
> it is almost as if everything feels free these days to evolve in non-
> backwards-compatible ways, following the motto "what do i care 
> for my apis of yesterday?". 
> 
> with the ongoing trend towards separately evolving libraries rather 
> than prepackaged kitchen-sink releases, this means that useful 
> libraries die quickly, and have to be revived continuously, or they 
> will be left behind. one symptom is "get the latest from hackage" 
> replacing useful extra libraries kept in sync with each other (never 
> mind that the hackage versions are no more likely to work without 
> fixes than the in-repository versions).
> 
> it is often small things ("that function/option has been renamed", 
> "you now need to import x instead of y", "you can work around 
> this by using 2 cabal files, then removing one depending on 
> context", etc.), but as all dependencies keep eroding in this way, 
> haskell projects are now built on sand rather than firm foundations, 
> requiring constant attention just to avoid falling behind - attention 
> that would better be focussed on development than maintenance.
> 
> just a thought,
> claus
> 
> ps. perhaps i've misunderstood, and there is in fact a haskell
>     cabal trying to introduce as many version incompatibilities
>     as possible, to ensure a market demand for cabal.. ?-)

I agree that Cabal is really unstable ATM.  The problem is that we added
new features, but are still missing lots of features and are facing yet
unsolved problems.  Also, the Cabal code needs quite some cleanup which
we do while adding new features.  The problem is, that this brakes many
Setup.lhs files, also in base libraries.  But this should only affect
ghc HEAD, nothing else.  This is the development version, so you can't
really expect it to be stable at all.

So, could you please exclude Cabal (and stay with me when I say we hope
to have things stable by the next ghc release), re-evaluate the
situation excluding anything related to Cabal issues (ie, setup.lhs
errors), and see if your issue still exists?

Thanks,
/ Thomas