As discussed in patch1908, this change gets rid of --exact-version.

I won't screen this straight away, but I'd like to soon.

I haven't investigated if there is any impact on our release process,
but I think it'd be easier to handle that when doing the next major
release.

1 patch for repository darcs-unstable@darcs.net:screened:

patch 94e88720a21b69267e8accda38b4f9aa03880b31
Author: Ganesh Sittampalam <ganesh@earth.li>
Date:   Sat Jan 25 22:59:08 GMT 2020
  * remove darcs --exact-version
  
  The orchestration required to produce it adds a lot of painful
  complexity, especially on Windows where the generated files
  in release/ can cause locking problems. Also sdistHook is
  being removed from Cabal.

Attachments

• patch-preview.txt
• remove-darcs-__exact_version.dpatch
• unnamed

BTW I believe this patch alone will solve the two worst problems we 
currently have with Setup.hs.

Those are:
 - being blocked on moving to Cabal 3.0
 - the random problems with release/distributed-{version,context}
   (particularly on Windows).

I'd still like to be totally rid of it, but this would be a major
step forward.

I agree that we should get rid of the sdist hooks to enable cabal-3.

I am not yet sure we need to sacrifice --exact-version completely. The
shenanigans with adding new files under release/ were, I think, only
necessary because we wanted to support the completely separate sdist
step. If we remove the sdist hook, then we should be able to directly
generate the exact version when we generate the Version.hs file.

Let me give it a try before you screen this one.

Attachments

• pEpkey.asc

Okay, here is my counter proposal that leaves --version and --exact-version
intact and only removes the sdist hook (and also the postConf hook).

1 patch for repository http://darcs.net/screened:

patch 5fb99624a4acd9cfd8bc807cdb534f9232d706b9
Author: Ben Franksen <ben.franksen@online.de>
Date:   Sun Jan 26 20:56:37 CET 2020
  * remove sdist and postConf hooks from Setup.hs

Attachments

• patch-preview.txt
• remove-sdist-and-postconf-hooks-from-setup_hs.dpatch
• unnamed

> Okay, here is my counter proposal that leaves --version and --exact-version
> intact and only removes the sdist hook (and also the postConf hook).

It also no longer stores context and version in files under release/
since that was indeed only necessary to communicate this data to 'cabal
sdist'.

Attachments

• pEpkey.asc

I think you need to remove the files from darcs.cabal too.

I'm actually a bit confused about why I had frequent locking errors
if those files are only actually written in sDistHook. Perhaps 
that's called more often than just during "cabal sdist".

Your patch would indeed also achieve the two most important goals
of my patch. But I think I'd still rather be rid of Setup.hs 
completely than to keep --exact-version. Still, we could revisit
that if and when we are able to remove the manpage generation.

Amended version that also removes the release/ entries in the
extra-source-files section of darcs.cabal.

1 patch for repository http://darcs.net/screened:

patch 7a3388829209725128d0f9152746da7ac3c8ea88
Author: Ben Franksen <ben.franksen@online.de>
Date:   Sun Jan 26 20:56:37 CET 2020
  * remove sdist and postConf hooks from Setup.hs

Attachments

• patch-preview.txt
• remove-sdist-and-postconf-hooks-from-setup_hs.dpatch
• unnamed

> I think you need to remove the files from darcs.cabal too.

Right. Will amend.

> I'm actually a bit confused about why I had frequent locking errors
> if those files are only actually written in sDistHook.

Indeed, this is strange.

> Perhaps 
> that's called more often than just during "cabal sdist".

I skimmed through the sources of Cabal and cabal-install and couldn't
find any hint for that.

> Your patch would indeed also achieve the two most important goals
> of my patch. But I think I'd still rather be rid of Setup.hs 
> completely than to keep --exact-version. Still, we could revisit
> that if and when we are able to remove the manpage generation.

Note that with the removal of the sdist hooks and the endianness stuff,
our custom Setup has become a lot simpler.

BTW, I see now that cabal sdist is used when we make a release to create
the hackage upload. I think this is okay, as we don't want to upload
intermediate versions, only cleanly tagged released ones.

Attachments

• pEpkey.asc

On 26/01/2020 22:14, Ben Franksen wrote:

>> Your patch would indeed also achieve the two most important goals
>> of my patch. But I think I'd still rather be rid of Setup.hs 
>> completely than to keep --exact-version. Still, we could revisit
>> that if and when we are able to remove the manpage generation.
> 
> Note that with the removal of the sdist hooks and the endianness stuff,
> our custom Setup has become a lot simpler.

Any custom Setup.hs makes building a bit more complicated as
dependencies on Cabal-the-library have to be resolved, and I've
certainly had bad experiences with it.

> BTW, I see now that cabal sdist is used when we make a release to create
> the hackage upload. I think this is okay, as we don't want to upload
> intermediate versions, only cleanly tagged released ones.

Right, I think the primary use of --exact-version is for development
builds. Though it does also capture the exact versions of underlying
libraries. Personally I don't think I've ever actually made use of the
information.

Anyway, let's go with your patch and I can always re-advocate for
complete removal if and when there is a solution to the manpage problem.

This seems to already be applied to screened/reviewed in the modified
form proposed by Ben.