[darcs-users] QuickCheck 2.1 now required to build darcs (unstable)

[Trent W. Buck]

Eric Kow <kowey at darcs.net> writes:

> Buildslave managers, and anybody that wants to compile the current
> darcs unstable, please take note: we now require QuickCheck 2.1 (as QC
> 2.0 no longer appears to be available).

As QuickCheck 1.1 is the latest version available in Debian, and Ian
is... something[0], I'd be obliged if this dependency could be made
optional in the next release.  Otherwise, I won't be able to include
that release in Debian!

This might require something ugly like

    ./configure --i-promise-not-to-make-unit

which would skip the test for quickcheck, and avoid generating .depends
for $(UNIT_FILES).

> This should be a simple matter of cabal update [...]

Such techniques are naughty in the debian build script, so this isn't an
"easy out" for the above.  Apart from that, cabal-install and its
dependency cabal 1.6 aren't available in Debian, either!

[0] I was going to say the packages were orphaned, but they aren't
    marked as such on:

    http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?package=haskell-quickcheck

> cabal upgrade quickcheck

I ran "cabal install 'quickcheck >= 2'"; without the version qualifier
it installed QC 1.4.  IIRC DonS told me this was because a lot of
unversioned dependencies on QuickCheck broke with QC 2, so cabal had a
special exception to avoid accidental upgrading.