Re: Opening up Cabal development
Excerpts from Herbert Valerio Riedel's message of 2016-07-13 23:40:06 -0700: > 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). Why can't we release experimental changes to the Cabal specification? Neither setup-depends nor convenience libraries went through any formal proposal mechanism. If a feature is good people will start using it and we will have to continue supporting it. If a feature is bad/not useful we can yank it from the next release; anyone using an experimental feature like this isn't trying to maximize their Cabal compatibility anyway. And any change to the format with cabal-install can't parse is not going to be supportable via custom-setup anyway. So how about this script, which is how web standards work: Cabal changes need to be informally proposed and discussed. But the advancer can also write a PR and get it merged in as an experimental extension, to be trialed for the next major release series. Eventually it gets standardized. Edward ___ cabal-devel mailing list cabal-devel@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
Re: Opening up Cabal development
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 pgpXTVc6nPbGB.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ cabal-devel mailing list cabal-devel@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
Re: Opening up Cabal development
On 14 July 2016 at 03:13, Edward Z. Yang wrote: >1. Can we parse all of Hackage? > >[...] > >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. If someone wants to look into this, the following links should be helpful: https://github.com/commercialhaskell/all-cabal-files https://github.com/23Skidoo/all-custom-setups ___ cabal-devel mailing list cabal-devel@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
Re: Opening up Cabal development
Excerpts from Gershom B's message of 2016-07-13 18:01:50 -0700: > On July 13, 2016 at 7:32:47 PM, Edward Z. Yang (ezy...@mit.edu) wrote: > > The general notion sounds good to me. I’m semi-indifferent between (1) > and (2) though conservatively lean towards the latter. > > > - The Travis build must always be green. We should prioritize > > adding more tests for things we care about. Look into regular > > Hackage tests. > > - PR all your changes (so that you can check that Travis is green), > > try to get approval for big changes but BE BOLD. > > I’d add > > - 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. > > (and I don’t know what tests would be necessary to help notice this, > but they’d probably be useful!) Simple, we need Hackage-level CI. Here are few possible things to test: 1. Can we parse all of Hackage? 2. Can we build all of Stackage? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/haskell-stack/oi-VJrAIJbE/FjAPVZTUAQAJ Attempting to build all of Hackage is dicey business because it is a combinatorial explosion, and you do not know what is supposed to build. But Stackage is supposed to build. Test that 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. 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. Edward ___ cabal-devel mailing list cabal-devel@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
Re: Opening up Cabal development
On July 13, 2016 at 7:32:47 PM, Edward Z. Yang (ezy...@mit.edu) wrote: The general notion sounds good to me. I’m semi-indifferent between (1) and (2) though conservatively lean towards the latter. > - The Travis build must always be green. We should prioritize > adding more tests for things we care about. Look into regular > Hackage tests. > - PR all your changes (so that you can check that Travis is green), > try to get approval for big changes but BE BOLD. I’d add - 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. (and I don’t know what tests would be necessary to help notice this, but they’d probably be useful!) —gershom ___ cabal-devel mailing list cabal-devel@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
Re: Opening up Cabal development
Hi, On 14 July 2016 at 01:32, Edward Z. Yang wrote: > Why don't we give them all commit access! (If we want to do (1) also > look at the current PR queue.) Fine with me. I tried something like this on a smaller scale previously, giving write access to a number of people with a history of quality contributions. > If people want, we could also formalize some more rules about the state > of master, e.g., > > - The Travis build must always be green. We should prioritize > adding more tests for things we care about. Look into regular > Hackage tests. > - PR all your changes (so that you can check that Travis is green), > try to get approval for big changes but BE BOLD. +1 on having a welcome page for new developers on the wiki. ___ cabal-devel mailing list cabal-devel@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
Opening up Cabal development
Hey all, Paolo Giarrusso suggested that the Cabal project might look into giving more people commit bits, ala http://felixge.de/2013/03/11/the-pull-request-hack.html I think we do need to give more commit bits. There's a sliding scale of how extreme we can go: 1. We can adopt this wholesale: you PR, your GitHub profile checks out, we give you bits. 2. If we accept your PR, we give you bits. 3. If we accept your PR for a new feature, we give you bits. For (2), I trawled the commit history for 2016 and here's what I think is all the commits from people without bits. I apologize if I missed anyone (I just went through the commit list by hand.) @thumphries https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/ce2ffb24902816ab02f6c6b50921fb3a9a8b92aa @sjakobi https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/bb9501bc23914a50684f288bc88cf04747d69c32 @accraze https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/11650b26ecf0ba95c3a7e747c0968735e906c3b0 @headprogrammingczar https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/e9883dced04e6a16e25752cc8513ce26325b4b4b https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/0252a0aed79e881d4f6210d9296216aef3c301d0 @randen https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commits/master?author=randen @aisamanra https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/6e2fca4314a01f07d520bc7b7669e70f70a231ce @kolmodin https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/0122e821825b875447f3844b349fba582fff39cf @mightybyte https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/ea01974be888d25ef918e7808aa6cf6b8aac1275 @gbaz https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/c69dfb8209dc7bfd9abf2a7e494704db652073c9 @garetxe https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/c72aa8dbb5a11fb4137bda62c9b7a99fb48b7649 @komadori https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/1da9b3533e6a0fae8692fa0f4f532ea63d43ccc8 @mgsloan https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/c10a4ca8c50290efc0b0ea65b34116ae165ccc9b @lukexi https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/5efc6341643e7fd98b33aea5a6ab96873d597787 @mpkh https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/fcaf5d02947c5fd853ff69e2326e08f0082530c1 @pra85 https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/a69b0ea23b0f00be30933a1dbb63fbc4f1306c17 @tvestelind https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/fe7b597542d57c74814620ed7a553e252b570ac7 @corngood https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/4214572306205ad2c20943ef2b3aacbc912c45d3 @gelisam https://github.com/haskell/cabal/commit/6b3457de66772d958fd5fe96066b08e93d0fb0c7 Why don't we give them all commit access! (If we want to do (1) also look at the current PR queue.) If people want, we could also formalize some more rules about the state of master, e.g., - The Travis build must always be green. We should prioritize adding more tests for things we care about. Look into regular Hackage tests. - PR all your changes (so that you can check that Travis is green), try to get approval for big changes but BE BOLD. Cheers, Edward ___ cabal-devel mailing list cabal-devel@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel
