Re: updating many haskell packages

[Federico Beffa <beffa@ieee.org>]

Troy Sankey <sankeytms@gmail.com> writes:

> I have a WIP branch which contains many haskell package updates and
> additions, and makes haskell-build-system use the latest ghc (8.0.2).
>
> https://github.com/pwnage101/guix/tree/add-gitit
>
> It started as a small project to create a Gitit package (hence the name
> of the branch), but blew up into something larger.  It's hard work, so I
> just wanted to check in with you all to see if this seems like the right
> direction.
>
> As of this writing, I have over 66 packages updated, 16 added, and
> various fixes on existing packages to get everything buildable against
> ghc@8.0.2.  I'm debating whether I should systematically update all the
> haskell packages while I'm at it, or just make sure everything is
> buildable under 8.0.2.  There are over 277 haskell packages in all.
>
> I wonder how I should send these patches after I'm all done.  git
> send-email?  That seems crazy.

I agree, it's a lot of work and guaranteeing package compatibility is
not straightforward.  To simplify things I would like to suggest to
exploit the work done by Stackage (www.stackage.org) and follow the
latest LTS release.

I prepared a 'stackage' importer.  It looks up the list of packages at
https://www.stackage.org/lts (can select which LTS version), extract the
version used there and downloads that version of the package from
hackage (with the hackage importer).

Two points are open:

(i) I still need to finish the updater (to work with 'refresh').

(ii) The latest LTS still uses GHC 8.0.1.  I'm not sure if this is
because of some real problem (GHC 8.0.2 introduces some
incompatibilities) or if it is because changing things takes time.

I will probably be able to share the importer/updater in one week (don't
have much time to work on it during the week).

Regards,
Fede