[Haskell-cafe] Cabal upload issue

[Duncan Coutts]

On Thu, 2009-11-12 at 17:37 +0000, Sam Martin wrote:
> Although it might be a pain in the arse to some degree, is there any
> reason why 'base' is considered special? 
> 
> As an example, I've come across a fair number of libraries/apps that
> (presumably) compile against a previous version of OpenGL, but not the
> current latest.

The plan eventually is to do this for all packages that opt-in to
following the PVP[1]. Base follows the PVP and it's a bit special since
it's the single package that causes most breakage when new major
versions come out. So we're dealing with part of the problem now as a
special case and the rest of the problem later when we've got the
appropriate infrastructure.

> Given it's impossible to test any package against libraries that don't
> yet exist, shouldn't the upper bound be required for all package
> dependencies?

True, however when you write that dependency you have no idea what that
upper bound ought to be unless you know the package is following some
kind of version policy. That's why we would only enforce it for packages
that opt-in to the PVP.

[1]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Package_versioning_policy

Duncan