> On 16 Sep 2016, at 09:24, Chris Smith <cdsm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I guess the overriding question I have here is: what is the PROBLEM being > solved? I know of basically no beginners who were confused or intimidated by > the syntax of Cabal's file format.
As a "beginner"(*), I fully agree. However having more than one language in the mix can be confusing and complicating... > It's fairly commonplace for beginners to be confused by the *semantics*: > which fields are needed and what they mean, how package version bounds work, > what flags are and how they interact with dependencies, the relationship > between libraries and executables defined in the same file, etc. It's all about the semantics - it should preferably be formalised, and ideally the relevant library/package system should be able to check/enforce rules. > But the syntax? It's just not an issue. I'm not sure what it means to say > that people have to "learn" it, because in introducing dozens of people to > building things in Haskell, I've never seen that learning process even be > noticeable, much less an impediment. I quite agree > Andrew Butterfield School of Computer Science & Statistics Trinity College Dublin 2, Ireland (*) I've only started to use cabal recently, because a TA of mine built a cabal-based coursework grading system for me - I generally do application devpt in Haskell and the only build command I need is ghc --make.... Currently moving quickly onto stack this year.... _______________________________________________ Haskell-community mailing list Haskell-community@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-community
