Backpack is undocumented

[23Skidoo]

A user on Reddit brought to my attention that searching for "Backpack" in the user's guide returns zero results. It'd be nice if there was a Backpack section in the user's guide like we have for Nix integration, right now I have to refer people to posts on @ezyang's blog.

[ocharles]

I'm quite surprised Backpack officially made it into 2.0 (to the point of receiving the blessing of being in the Changelog), yet made it there without any documentation. I do not mean this in a snarky way, but is there a release process behind releasing cabal-install, and if so - should this process not require that all new user facing features be documented? Also, I see this isn't scheduled for a milestone yet - should it be?

[ezyang]

Hi @ocharles, the lack of documentation in the Cabal user manual was an oversight, due in part to the fact that the documentation is "elsewhere" (https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Backpack ; the thesis contains a complete and accurate description of what Cabal supports). We definitely should add a Backpack section to the Cabal manual and it is one of my priorities.

[ocharles]

Awesome, thanks @ezyang. I hope I didn't come across too negative, though my question about whether documentation is part of the release manager's checklist does still stand.

[phadej]

@ezyang bump.

[23Skidoo]

@ezyang, if you want to get this in before the next release, the branch-off date will be sometime around 15 Jan.

[sjakobi]

Bump! :)

[cartazio]

@hvr @ezyang has there been more action on this?

[cartazio]

bumpity bump bump :)

[ezyang]

btw, Backpack is explicitly mentioned in the user guide now, but there is not a Backpack section which puts it together