Hackage is flooded with old package versions reuploads

[Duncan Coutts]

On Mon, 2015-01-19 at 09:59 -0500, Brandon Allbery wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 7:06 AM, Herbert Valerio Riedel <hvr at gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> > The reason I wouldn't be happy is that the effects of a "broken" package
> > (especially the more popular it becomes) can't be contained easily. The
> >
> 
> I wonder if Hackage can be extended to support an out-of-band "broken" flag
> that can be applied to such packages, and cabal-install then refuse to use
> those packages (possibly with an option to override).

This can be achieved by editing the .cabal file, and Herbert has done so
in at least one case. It's just a matter of making the constraints
impossible, e.g. base > 1 && < 1. It could possibly be done more
obviously or directly, e.g. adding a dep on something impossible (though
note that we don't currently allow adding deps).

Deprecation is orthogonal I'd say. People may need to rely on deprecated
packages while they migrate away.

Duncan