[Haskell-cafe] Design for 2010.2.x series Haskell Platform site

[Iavor Diatchki]

The changelog feature would be very useful---dumping repository
history is no substitute for it because it is too low level (contains
too much noise).  Generally, I would expect that whoever makes the
release of a piece of software should be in charge of writing a
summary of what's new since the last release.  In the case of the
Haskell platform I would expect just a highlight of major new things
(e.g., adding/removing new packages, or updates that solve some well
known problem, or add an interesting new feature).

It would be nice to standardize on the format of a CHANGES file: then
hackage could render it nicely, and the HP could automatically compute
a mashup of the CHANGES files for the packages that it distributes.

-Iavor

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> wrote:
> dave:
>> >
>> > Actually, it just got trivial:
>> >
>> >    $ diffcabal old-platform.cabal haskell-platform.cabal
>> >    Cabal 1.8.0.2 -> 1.8.0.6
>> >    QuickCheck 2.1.0.3 -> 2.1.1.1
>> [etc.]
>>
>> Okay, so where do I go to find out the difference between, say,
>> QuickCheck 2.1.0.3 and 2.1.1.1?
>>
>> --
>
> Currently, the way to do this is:
>
>    * Visit:
>        http://hackage.haskell.org/package/QuickCheck-2.1.1.1
>
>    * Visit:
>        http://hackage.haskell.org/package/QuickCheck-2.1.0.3
>
> And note any differences in the documentation.
>
> Hackage doesn't yet provide support for changelogs. However, it does
> provide support for repository links, from which we can construct a
> changelog. That's right: you have to read each repo to get the full
> changelog, unless the author has been nice to add it to the .cabal file.
>
> I think what we need is:
>
>    * Every HP package has to have a .cabal file with the source
>      repository type and link.
>
> If we have the source repo and type, I can write a tool to extract the
> changelogs between each release automatically.
>
> -- Don
>
> E.g.
>    * darcs
>    * http://code.haskell.org/QuickCheck/
>
> From here we can:
>
>    $ darcs get http://code.haskell.org/QuickCheck/
>
> And running darcs changes:
>
>    Thu Jun 17 07:52:28 PDT 2010
>    * Bump version number
>
>    Thu Jun 17 06:53:22 PDT 2010
>    * Change of plan: look at GHC's version number instead of the
>    * version of base when deciding whether to depend on the ghc
>    * library
>
>    Thu Jun 17 06:40:22 PDT 2010
>    * Added README to the source distribution
>
>    Thu Jun 17 06:33:38 PDT 2010
>    * Updated the README
>
>    Thu Jun 17 06:33:27 PDT 2010
>    * GHC 6.8 support
>
>    Thu Jun 17 06:13:54 PDT 2010
>    * Added support for the new base library (I hope!)
>
>    Thu Jun 17 02:59:14 PDT 2010
>    * Remove the pointless last field of the version number
>
>    Thu Jun 17 02:32:46 PDT 2010
>    * Fix homepage link
>
>    Wed Apr 28 08:04:02 PDT 2010
>    * Added my file of weird examples
>
>    Thu Apr 22 08:37:11 PDT 2010
>    * Bump the version number
>
>    Thu Apr 22 08:27:39 PDT 2010
>    * Don't force the shrink list too early
>
>    Fri Jan 22 10:25:20 PST 2010
>    * Added an Arbitrary instance for complex numbers
>
>    Tue Jan 12 07:34:00 PST 2010
>    * Changed the way that size increases
>
>    Tue Jan 12 07:33:52 PST 2010
>    * Changed the cabal version number
>
>    Tue Jan 12 06:47:25 PST 2010
>    * Skip shrinking on interrupt
>
>    Tue Jan 12 06:47:04 PST 2010
>    * Added isInterrupt to Test.QuickCheck.Exception
>
>
>
>
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