Ian Lynagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Sat, Nov 25, 2006 at 09:57:50AM -0800, Isaac Jones wrote: >> Ross Paterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >> > On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 01:36:13AM +0000, Duncan Coutts wrote: >> >> Note that in future we intend to allow there being no Setup.(l)hs at all >> >> when using cabal-setup. No Setup.(l)hs file would be equivalent to the >> >> basic one that uses defaultMain. >> > >> > Could we have an optional field in the package description to tell >> > cabal-setup which setup to use? There could be tokens representing >> > >> > main = Distribution.Simple.defaultMain >> > main = Distribution.Simple.defaultMainWithHooks defaultUserHooks >> > main = Distribution.Make.defaultMain >> >> Since we've decided to go with making Setup.[l]hs optional, I agree > > What's the advantage of making it optional, especially now we have > mkcabal to make the defaultMain Setup.lhs for us? It would be much > simpler, IMO, if it was the case that all cabal packages have a > Setup.lhs file. > > As we need to support the presence of a Setup.lhs, no tool can be made > simpler by allowing it to be absent (and many will need a little extra > complexity to cope), and the only saving is a tiny amount of compilation > for one (admittedly common) case.
I see your point about layered tools needing to do a somewhat more complex check for Setup.lhs. Really, layered tools should try to use cabal-setup and let that tool handle finding the Setup file (or not) but cabal-setup isn't in common use yet. But if we're talking about tools in Debian and Gentoo, it would probably be best to require that cabal-setup is there and just use that. The thing about requiring Setup.lhs is that it makes running setup just a little more complex than it needs to be; runhaskell isn't really in common use yet and compiling Setup files still can cause problems. I still think that if Haskell were as easy to envoke as something like perl or php (via runhaskell), we'd have more adoption. I know it doesn't help that Cabal's API isn't particularly stable. peace, isaac _______________________________________________ cabal-devel mailing list cabal-devel@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
