On 2016-07-14 at 03:13:31 +0200, Edward Z. Yang wrote: [...]
>> - I don’t break backwards compat for APIs without notice and >> discussion, and don’t break backwards compat for any element of cabal >> files without lots of discussion. [...] > 3. Can we build all Setup.hs scripts on Hackage? This lets us know > which APIs in Cabal matter, and which ones we can change. > We'll need to establish base truth for this. While we shouldn't break the API without a good reason, we added custom-setup/setup-depends for the very reason to finally be able to break Setup.hs. Now we can specify `Setup.hs`'s dependencies with version constraints accurately, just like we already do with other library dependencies via build-depends. Moreover, cabal-install has a generous implicit upper bound on the Cabal lib version: -- The idea here is that at some point we will make significant -- breaking changes to the Cabal API that Setup.hs scripts use. -- So for old custom Setup scripts that do not specify explicit -- constraints, we constrain them to use a compatible Cabal version. -- The exact version where we'll make this API break has not yet been -- decided, so for the meantime we guess at 2.x. cabalCompatMaxVer = Version [2] [] So criteria 3 should be seen in the light of custom-setup/setup-depends. Otoh, maybe we should collect and batch up all ideas (including refactoring/aesthetic changes) to break the Cabal API for a big Cabal 2.0 rupture... :-) > It is a travesty that this infrastructure does not exist; it may even > be possible to do (1) and (3) on Travis, as they should not take too > long to do. So far, the criteria mentioned address mostly regressions. What about changes extending the .cabal syntax? There's frequently proposals to extend the features of .cabal files. I happen to propose extensions myself from time to time (motivated by the issues I see as Hackage Trustee). Since changes to .cabal are effectively changes to the CABAL specification future generations will have to cope with, I'd propose that changes affecting or introducing new .cabal syntax/semantics should go through a proposal process. I.e. write up a specification/proposal outlining motivation (i.e. what problem does this solve), specify what the changes are exactly (syntax & semantics), what the consequences are, and so on. Then we inevitably need some criteria to decide whether a proposal is accepted and approved for implementation. This could be formally in the hands of the core library committee together with the Hackage trustees (since we do have quite some experience with .cabal files and care a lot about the Hackage ecosystem). -- hvr
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