[darcs-users] darcs patch: Import cabalisation: Setup.lhs, darcs.ca... (and 13 more)

[Trent W. Buck]

"Jason Dagit" <dagit at codersbase.com> writes:

> On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 12:38 AM, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In general I'm more inclined to trust what ./configure says than some
>> other subsidiary build system that might not be up to date.
>
> What do you mean by "might not be up to date"?  Are you referring to
> the case where darcs.cabal exists but cabal isn't used to build darcs?

Precisely; at least where its not used by *most* people.  If Cabal was
the "blessed" build system then I'd be using its dependency information
because cabal would be the thing that complained when I (deliberately)
tried to build it in a chroot with no libraries, to find out what it
complains about.

>> Debian build dependencies are managed by the debian/control file, and
>> this file is not allowed to be auto-generated.
>
> I see.  So that could partially explain why Debian is so far behind
> Arch in supporting Haskell packages.

It's probably as much because Debian has extremely rigorous scrutiny for
both new packages (that is, the first time a package enters the main
Debian archive) and new developers.  Non-developers require sponsorship
to upload packages, and it can be very hard to attract the attention of
a sponsor for a library package.

(It might also be that there's currently a high correlation between Arch
users and Haskell library authors, and the authors make sure their own
systems work well.)