On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 01:08, Jon Fairbairn jon.fairba...@cl.cam.ac.uk wrote:
John Millikin jmilli...@gmail.com writes:
This allows users to install the package, without installing 3rd-party
utilities, or downloading (possibly varying) versions from external
websites. As your library is currently written, two users who install
it might end up with dramatically different modules, depending on the
contents of http://www.iso.org/iso/iso3166_en_code_lists.txt .
It would take a major global political ructions to make them
/dramatically/ different, but I'm aware of the issue...
Well, say some country changes its name, and thus its code. Or some
small country decides to join a larger one. Generated modules will
then have different sets of constructors, but the same version number,
violating the package versioning guidelines.
Second, since the module is based on an external data set, a
date-based version might more appropriate. Version 0.1 means
nothing, but version 2010.4.24 indicates when the given version was
generated. Alternatively, you can use a hybrid system to indicate both
stability and the date -- such as 0.1.20100424.
Something like this is already on my TODO list, but the date
that I want to appear in the version number would be the
last-modified-date of the downloaded code-list. How do I get
that (which the build already puts into a file¹) into the .cabal
file?
You could generate the .cabal file also, but it would probably just be
easier to check last-modified and set the version number directly.
Third, if you'd like your module to be widely used in the Haskell
community, the BSD3 or MIT license would be more appropriate. For
technical reasons, the GPL and LGPL are essentially equivalent for
Haskell packages. For political reasons, choosing the GPL will reduce
your user market to free-software users. This isn't *necessarily* bad
-- all of my large projects are GPL'd -- but be aware that your choice
will heavily limit how many people use your library.
Something close GPL is what I want -- if I'm doing this for
openly and for nothing, I don't see why anyone should build
something on the back of it and make it proprietary without me
having a say. I'd be happy to put a notice somewhere to the
effect that I'm willing to negotiate terms for a separate
license for inclusion in proprietary code, though I'd like to
know the proper way of doing that.
That's fine, but be aware that it'll make your stated goal of I think
anything that uses
country codes should use this datatype! rather difficult to achieve.
Many Haskell developers seem to oppose the GPL -- for example, see the
comments when I released GPL'd bindings to CPython:
http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/ajbvb/cpython_haskell_ffi_bindings_to_python/
Fourth, consider storing your code in a version control system (like
Darcs[1]),
it already is.
and publishing it on a website like Patch-Tag[2].
I was waiting for it to be uploaded overnight. If my rsync
system isn't configured to delete it next time,
darcs get --lazy http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jf15/ISO3166_CountryCodes/
Ah -- there was no source repository stanza in the Cabal file, so I'd
assumed it hadn't been checked into version control yet. I've rebased
my repository upon yours, and attached the Darcs bundle for my changes
to this email.
Finally, instead of using a Makefile to build the library or
documentation, consider using the cabal-install utility[4]. It's much
more common for a library to use cabal build or cabal haddock than
custom make commands, and external tools (such as Hackage) will work
better.
I'd be grateful for a patch (against my repo) that did that.
I've used make for thirty years, so learning something else
doesn't hold great appeal.
Cabal doesn't replace Make -- it just defines some basic commands for
compiling, building the documentation, etc. This allows Caballized
packages to be installed on a variety of systems, which might not have
a sane version of Make installed. Usually, this is sufficient to build
all but the most complex of packages (eg, Gtk2Hs).
iso3166_build-style-fixes.patch
Description: Binary data
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