On 29 March 2011 12:19, Brandon S Allbery KF8NH <[email protected]> wrote: >> No, my meaning was that the reasoning of "I don't need to specify this >> as a dependency since it's part of the Platform" isn't sound since not >> everyone has the Platform. > > The point of the Platform is to provide a baseline. So you *are* saying it > is pointless, because you want packages to confirm to a different baseline.
My impression that the Platform was a baseline in regards to "what do I need to get started to develop with Haskell?", and not in terms of specifying dependencies. After all, we still need to specify a dependency on `base' in .cabal files, even though it comes with GHC and other compilers (let alone the Platform)? Consider also people who just want to use software written in Haskell but aren't developers, especially those that use distros like Gentoo that build from source (either by default or optionally for non-packaged software) rather than using pre-built binaries: they aren't going to want to know/care about the Platform, they just want their package manager to get the minimal dependencies that are required to build and install that piece of software. As such, being explicit about build tools is beneficial in this regard (e.g. when gtk2hs was cabalised, how much fun was had when cabal-install couldn't work out that it needed to install gtk2hs-buildtools to get the extra build tools it needed?). -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic [email protected] IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list [email protected] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
