Cool C libraries we could have on hackage server

[Duncan Coutts]

On Fri, 2009-06-05 at 10:03 +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> Maurí­cio wrote:
> 
> > There are many libraries we probably would like to have bindings
> > for, but we need to have them on hackage to do that.
> 
> I really don't think that is true.
> 
> Just to pick one that I am aware of:
> 
>     http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/hsndfile
> 
> This relies on libsndfile and was successfully built on the
> hackage server.

This is quite by accident and not by design.

>From the build log:
        Using Cabal-1.6.0.1 compiled by ghc-6.8

It will fail as of Cabal-1.6.0.2+ since configure now checks that
required header files and libs actually exist on the machine. Even
without the check, it'd fail in future if we move to using shared libs
by default rather than static libs.

This issue of what is available on the current single hackage build
client shows the flaws in the current design. There should not be a
single hackage build client, there should be many. That way it doesn't
matter if not everyone has a particular C lib installed. We have such a
system 3/4s implemented but it is stalled due to lack of volunteer
developer time.

Any volunteers to pick up the development of the new happstack-base
hackage server? It's nearly at feature parity with the current server.
It can already accept upload of build reports from cabal-install
clients. It's just lacking docs upload/download and proper management of
authentication.

http://code.haskell.org/hackage-server/


Duncan