Re: 05/05: gnu: Add ghc-hspec-discover.

[Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com>]

Hi,

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

>
> Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com> writes:
>
>> We already have “hspec-discover” without the “ghc” prefix.  The two
>> packages look identical to me – is this an unintentional copy?
>
> Oh! I hadn't noticed!
>
> Well, is there any strong reason to use "hspec-discover" over
> "ghc-hspec-discover", besides that it already exists?

The loose convention is that libraries have the prefix, and programs
don’t.  The “hspec-discover” package was added before my time, but I
guess whoever added it was following that convention.

> For the arguments in favor of using ghc-hspec-discover:
> - every other "hspec" package uses the "ghc-" prefix,
> - the hackage importer names it,
> - the hackage importer will add "ghc-hspec-discover" as an input anyway.

That is definitely a problem.  From my experience, “hspec-discover” is
often missed by the importer because it is put in “build-tool-depends”
instead of “build-depends” in the Cabal file.  Ideally, the importer
would know to add it from “build-tools-discover” and it would know what
it should be named.

> So what about deprecating "hspec-discover" in favor of
> "ghc-hspec-discover"?

I did a quick scan of the “text-conversions” source code, and it doesn’t
seem to use “hspec-discover” as a library.  It looks like it’s just a
mistake in the Cabal file.

Between the convention and the fact that “hspec-discover” is almost
always used as a program instead of a library, I would say that it’s
okay the way it is.  Beyond that, it would be quite a bit of churn to
change it with very little benefit.

> Thanks for the heads up!

No problem.  Thanks for committing packages!


-- Tim