cabal check should warn when readme or changelog exist but aren't included in extra-source-files

[sjakobi]

Browsing hackage would be a lot nicer if everyone would upload their READMEs.

Would it be within the scope of cabal check to look for a README in the package directory and give a warning/suggestion, if that file isn't listed among the extra-source-files?

If such a warning is not within the scope of cabal check, is there another command that could be reasonably enhanced with such a warning?

[ezyang]

Seems like a reasonable thing to me.

[23Skidoo]

While we're at it, we should also add a warning for missing changelog.

[ezyang]

@sjakobi Don't forget to PR your change! :)

[sjakobi]

I will! :)

I still need to make my patch work with glob patterns in the extra-source-files section, but that won't be much work.

[jneira]

I think this makes sense @sjakobi do you think your work could be shared as a draft pr? thanks!

[sjakobi]

@jneira Apologies for the late response! AFAIK all my work on this issue is in this commit: sjakobi@7dedf0c.

If anyone is interested in completing this work, feel free to use that code in any way you see fit.

[Mikolaj]

@sjakobi: thank you very much. I've labelled this correctly, so let's hope somebody picks it up now.

[Mikolaj]

I put these in extra-doc-files. Is that a bad choice?

[Mikolaj]

I think extra-source-files is actually a bad choice. Should we warn "are you sure your README/changelog is displayed by your executable or otherwise used when compiling your code?"? I guess too many persons make that mistake, so rather not, especially if we are not ready to scan the code and look for uses of README/changelog (I think this may be done in the future for other functionalities and then we can reconsider). Perhaps there was no extra-doc-files initially and only extra-source-files?

[philderbeast]

Browsing hackage would be a lot nicer if everyone would upload their READMEs.

I used to upload readmes but sometimes their rendering on hackage was not what I wanted so I removed them. I think that is OK if the package description is good and there's a link to the source-repository or homepage where the readme is well rendered.

• Readme in RST format. hackage-server#890
• Support for reference-style links in readme hackage-server#650
• README/Changelog rendering: Support a larger subset of GitHub-flavored Markdown hackage-server#565

[wismill]

@ulysses4ever A warning for changelogs has been added in #8657. However this issue should maybe be kept opened for further discussion: it would require fine-grained selectionable warnings to implement an exhaustive check.

[Mikolaj]

Good idea. Reopening.

[ulysses4ever]

Thank you, that works for me!

[andreasabel]

@ulysses4ever Do you really want to keep this issue open when its OP has been addressed? Maybe it would be cleaner to open a new issue with the things you find are lacking still. That would save one from reading through a lot of now irrelevant comments...

[ulysses4ever]

@andreasabel I agree that a new issue with an updated goal would be much more helpful. I don't have energy to act on this at the moment though.

[ffaf1]

I can do it.

[ulysses4ever]

That would be awesome, @ffaf1 !

[ffaf1]

Done!