Regarding the network/network-uri split, tibbe has promised to backport things to 2.5.
https://github.com/haskell/network/commit/fba98d81bf733bb769316b86b6675011165e59f0#commitcomment-7996263 Alexander On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 9:27 PM, John Wiegley <[email protected]> wrote: > This message is a follow-on to a discuss Peter and I were having on GitHub, > since I believe it is of more general interest: > > >>>>>> Peter Simons writes: > > > Generally speaking, the two goals > > > > 1. have recent versions of all major Haskell packages and > > 2. all Haskell packages should compile > > > > are contradictory. The 2.6.x version of network has been out there since > Tue > > Sep 2 18:14:36 UTC 2014, i.e. for more than 1,5 months. Since 2.5.x and > > 2.6.x have incompatible APIs, many package authors don't bother > supporting > > the old version: they update their packages to compile against 2.6.x and > > never look back. Now, in that situation, we must switch to 2.6.x > eventually, > > because network 2.5.x cannot compile many available updates. At the same > > time, the switch to 2.6.x breaks the packages of all those people who > didn't > > update their libraries. > > > > So what are we supposed to do? Forgo the available updates to keep a > stable > > system or update at the cost of breaking packages that are sort-of > > unmaintained? > > > > I try to keep as many packages building as possible, and getting those > ~200 > > updates into master was a major effort for me, i.e. I worked on those > > commits several hours per day for the better part of a week. Even with > all > > that effort spent, however, I cannot remedy the fundamental conflict of > > interest between a system that's up-to-date and a system that's stable. > At > > some point, I just push whatever I have come up with and I rely on other > > people, like yourself, to help finding the best balance between those two > > contradictory goals. > > Hi Peter, > > First, let me state how much I appreciate the contribution you're making to > nixpkgs. Its support of Haskell is superb, and that is in large part due > to > your time and effort. My hope is to support you as best I can, and not to > criticize your efforts in any way. > > You are exactly right that we have a tension between those two goals. I > can > think of two things that might be done to remedy this, and perhaps make > updates to master more smooth: > > 1. We keep a dedicated branch, "haskell-updates", to which only your > Hackage > updates get pushed, or fixes to those updates. I will personally pull > and rebuild this branch every day on my machine, just as I presently > rebuild master nearly every day -- compiling more than 2,000 packages > that I keep locally updated through --leq. > > I (and hopefully others) will help to discover which packages can be > fixed by inserting references to older packages, which requires > patches, > and which must truly be marked as "broken" until the maintainer of > that > package can be contacted. > > Further, I'll help you to maintain a list of outstanding "broken" > packages, and see what can be done to make sure this list decreases > over > time. > > 2. The second option is to create a new haskellPackages set, called > 'stackage'. The Stackage maintainers already do a lot of the work > implied by #1, ensuring that every package within the Stackage set can > build together. Further, they only upgrade a package once they've > either > created a patch, or worked with upstream to update the package. > > Of course, the downside to this is: > > - less frequent updates of packages > - a smaller available package set > - life-draining maintenance of a mostly parallel package set > > The upside being that all patching/curating work is done for us, > likely > for as long as FP Complete keeps funding people to maintain Stackage. > > Most of the time I can resolve breakages that occur on master, and I'm > getting > up to speed with pushing the right fixes back to you via cabal2nix. > However, > I still rely on 'master' to be working overall on a daily basis, and > sometimes > the degree of breakage in haskellPackages is too much to handle all at > once, > forcing me to stop tracking 'master' -- which then delays my involvement in > getting those breakages fixed. > > I think if we had a separate channel for haskell updates, and that if you > and > I both worked together to get that channel ready for inclusion into > master, we > could make this upgrade effort smoother for everyone involved, and > hopefully > less stressful for you in particular. > > The only important part, then, is that we be sure this branch gets on > Hydra, > as another check of suitability. > > It would also be really nice to see you on IRC more, for asking question > about > upgrade decisions more quickly than through GitHub. But I understand if > that's not possible. > > Yours, > John > _______________________________________________ > nix-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev >
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