On 2010 Dec 6, at 15:39, Jacek Generowicz wrote:
On 2010 Dec 6, at 14:15, Duncan Coutts wrote:
In the development version of cabal we have changed that error
message
to try and make it clear that it is looking for a program called
pkg-config, not a Haskell package or a C lib.
cabal: The program pkg-config version >=0.9.0 is required but it
could not be
found.
Do you think that message would have helped avoid your confusion?
Oooh, that's a difficult question to answer, as I had read your
earlier paragraph before coming to this question. After your
explanation explained the error message (to the extent that I now
wonder how on earth I ever took it to mean that it's looking for X11-
xft version >=0.9.0, when it quite clearly states "pkg-config
version >=0.9.0 is required but could not be found"), I have no idea
whether the new message would have been better.
Is there an alternative message that would have been better?
Well, if I try to understand how I could have misunderstood the
original message, I suspect that it is because of the common style
of error message where the program generating the message precedes
the actual message on the same line, just like "cabal: ..." precedes
the message in this case. So I guess that I parsed it something like
"... pkg-config: version >=0.9.0 is required ..." and inferred that
'version' refers to the package mentioned in an earlier message.
In which case, maybe something like
cabal: version >=0.9.0 of pkg-config is required ...
would have prevented me from making this particular mistake in this
particular case.
Another thing that would probably have made it easier to understand:
the message is strictly correct, but is *too* specific: it talks about
pkg-config version >=0.9.0 not being found, while the problem was that
*no version at all* was present.
I would understand if making the error message change according to
such subtle distinctions would be more effort that it is worth.
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