quickcheck and ghci

[Joachim Breitner]

[Resend from Debian-Listmaster-Approved address...]

Hi,

On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:32:19 -0300, Marco Túlio Gontijo e Silva
<marcot at debian.org> wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> Excerpts from Nick Smallbone's message of Ter Abr 26 16:01:35 -0300
2011:
> (...)
>> > A second approach is to split this module in another package, for
>> > example,
>> > quickcheck-th.  The advantage is that, with the first approach, we
>> > either
>> > remove this module from Debian or keep the undesired dependency in
TH.
>> >  With
>> > the second approach, the module can be kept in Debian without
>> > requiring the
>> > dependency in TH for the quickcheck package.
>> 
>> With this new flag, won't QC depend on TH only on architectures where
>> TH is available? Setup.lhs will set the templateHaskell flag if the
>> template-haskell package exists and clear the flag otherwise, and it
>> only issues a Build-depends: template-haskell if the flag is true, so
>> it'll all work out automatically, won't it?
> 
> Yes, you're right, there's no need of splitting the package.

A separate package has the slight advantage that the API of quickcheck is
the same across all arches, e.g. if someone depends on quickcheck, he can
be sure of the modules provided, and there is no suprising failure if the
All module is missing. OTOH, I am advocating against package inflation,
and
such a build-time failure can be handled easily. (By making that package
Build-Depend on ghci). Hence, the flag solution is sufficient.

Greetings,
Joachim