The haskell platform in ubuntu?

[Iain Lane]

[accidently neglected to send to list, sorry]

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Hi,

Thanks for your concern.

On 17 Jul 2009, at 09:17, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote:

> http://orangesquash.org.uk/2009/07/04/debian-haskell-packaging-team-getting-underway/

That was me.

> Shall I just bother^H^H^H^H^H^H join them? Let me argue a bit why not.

You pretty much should, see below.

> The platform is released every six months, so it makes a very good
> candidate for synchronised releases in ubuntu. This is why perhaps
> ubuntu might have lots more success by adding the platform by itself
> rather than just synchronising to debian (I expect them to include the
> platform at a given version, and then update it in the next release,  
> so
> ubuntu would actually have outdated versions of the platform in its
> six-months cycle, defeating the sole purpose of the platform itself).

We (pkg-haskell) haven't even decided what to do here yet*, but I  
would imagine that this is not the case. We have no way of knowing  
when a Debian release is going to be and allowing so many packages to  
stagnate until a release is imminent doesn't sound like a good  
strategy. I would expect that we'd do rolling updates, not least  
because we are users too and like to see an updated Haskell platform  
just as much as anyone else.

There is no way that we are going to deviate on so many source  
packages, at least not without an Ubuntu Haskell Team that cares for  
such a task. We just don't have the resources to do it, and it would  
be suboptimal and confusing even if we did. I don't mean to say that  
we should allow Ubuntu to release with a worse Haskell stack just for  
the purposes of staying in sync; indeed if it costs us little to make  
a particular improvement that can't be done in Debian for whatever  
reason then we should do it. My point is that we should work in Debian  
first and foremost and only break away if we have to. I think that by  
concentrating our resources on our upstream that we'll be able to get  
a better stack in shape for everybody - ideally the only work we need  
to do in Ubuntu is the boring rebuilds when a new GHC version drops**

Regards,
Iain

* It would be nice if you could raise it on debian-haskell at lists.debian.org 
  to get a discussion going
** Incidentally, this is probably going to happen next week (6.10.4  
was just released yesterday) so get your transition gloves on if you  
want to help. I'll post another mail then.
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