[Haskell-cafe] PRE-ANNOUNCE: cabal-debian (automatically debianize cabal packages)

[Don Stewart]

nomeata:
> Hi,
> 
> Am Freitag, den 22.08.2008, 10:13 +0100 schrieb Magnus Therning:
> > On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 2:32 AM, David Bremner <bremner at unb.ca> wrote:
> > > At Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:52:00 -0400 (EDT),
> > > Christopher Lane Hinson wrote:
> > >> I'm not a DD, but I think uploading ~500 hackage packages to debian would
> > >> be a bit of a no-no.  Debian packages are expected to have active
> > >> maintainers both upstream and on the debian side, and to build without a
> > >> hitch on ten different architectures, or they don't make it into stable
> > >> and the DD responsible gets whined at.
> > >
> > > Fundamentally I think Lane is correct, but it is worth noting that the
> > > debian perl team maintains 938 CPAN modules. The effort involved is
> > > not trivial, but the number of consistently active people involved is
> > > not so huge (maybe 5 core people, and lots of people who are
> > > interested in one or two packages).
> > >
> > > Now, there are only 1217 registered installs of ghc6 on debian,
> > > compared to 74000+ perl installs (essentially everyone installs perl I
> > > guess), so it is not clear that the critical mass exists for a debian
> > > perl style team.
> > 
> > To add to this I suspect that there are more people involved in the
> > perl team than there even are DDs with ghc6 installed, but maybe I'm
> > just being negative.  Maybe the time is ripe for a Debian haskell
> > team?  I know the idea has been floated before on the Debian Haskell
> > list but I don't think it's ever gained any momentum.
> 
> I had it floated to the debian-haskell mailing list once, but as you
> said, there were not much responses. 
> 
> The Debian Perl Group (which was started by me some years ago) is indeed
> a good example for good library package maintenance. What made it
> successful was, in my opinion, people with constant devotion (that was
> not me :-)) and a faible for developing tools for the team. Have a look
> at http://pkg-perl.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/qareport.cgi and you see
> how it was possible to maintain this number of packages with just a few
> people.
> 
> Incidentally, a few days ago Ian Lynagh was asking if someone wants to
> take over his haskell packages, so if there were a group to be formed,
> it could start with all the base packages.
> 
> OTOH, this leaves the question open of who will maintain the compiler
> itself. Of course, this is a totally different thing than maintaining
> cabalized libraries and so far, no one has stepped up to give it a shot.

Yes, the key is to find a motivated Debian maintainer who can build a
coalition around them. 

-- Don