Package description field "Related" for related packages

[amigalemming]

I think it is good style for a package to mention alternative implementations or otherwise related packages. Currently I write this information in the Description field, but a specialised field could be parsed by the Hackage server and be displayed with hyperlinks to the related packages.
The simplest implementation would be just a list of package names like

Related: containers, array

However, an additional text explaining the relation to the current package would be nice, too. Maybe the syntax of the Source-Repository field can be copied.

[23Skidoo]

Not a bad idea, but I think that this should be implemented on the server. This field can be even made editable by registered users (although spam is a potential concern).

So perhaps the ticket should be moved to https://github.com/haskell/hackage-server/issues .

[23Skidoo]

OTOH, this feature seems to overlap with tags. Since Hackage already supports tags, perhaps you can use them instead?

[amigalemming]

Am 05.01.2014 03:05, schrieb Mikhail Glushenkov:

OTOH, this feature seems to overlap with tags. Since Hackage already
supports tags, perhaps you can use them instead?

How would this work? If I want to say that 'containers' is a related
package, then adding a tag 'containers' would not lead the user to the
containers package.

[23Skidoo]

You can group related packages under a common tag. For example, containers and unordered-containers would go under the data-structures tag.

[amigalemming]

Am 05.01.2014 12:36, schrieb Mikhail Glushenkov:

You can group related packages under a common tag. For example,
|containers| and |unordered-containers| would go under the
|data-structures| tag.

This in turn seems to duplicate the Category functionality. Setting tags
or categories requires an organized effort by the authors of all related
packages. This does not work very well for categories so far.

With "Related" I want to say things like "for application X the package
Y is better than this package" or "the advantage of this package over Z
is the feature W". I don't think that I can do this with tags.

[23Skidoo]

This in turn seems to duplicate the Category functionality. Setting tags or categories requires an organized effort by the authors of all related packages.

IIUC the idea with tags is that all trusted users should be able to edit them, not only the package's author. Maybe @dcoutts can comment.

With "Related" I want to say things like "for application X the package Y is better than this package" or "the advantage of this package over Z is the feature W". I don't think that I can do this with tags.

You can't say this with your proposed "Related" field either since it's just a list of packages without any metadata. What you propose is basically the same as tagging all related packages with a related-to-my-package tag.

[amigalemming]

Am 05.01.2014 20:48, schrieb Mikhail Glushenkov:

With "Related" I want to say things like "for application X the
package Y is better than this package" or "the advantage of this
package over Z is the feature W". I don't think that I can do this
with tags.

You can't say this with your proposed "Related" field either since it's
just a list of packages without any metadata.

In the last sentence I wrote: "However, an additional text explaining
the relation to the current package would be nice, too. Maybe the syntax
of the Source-Repository field can be copied."

[23Skidoo]

Maybe the syntax of the Source-Repository field can be copied.

Feels overengineered and probably won't be used widely.

Since the problem that you want to solve with this is basically missing hyperlinks, IMO it's easier to just add hyperlinks to your package description with the <http://...> syntax. See here for an example.

[23Skidoo]

A better idea IMO is to add support for inline hyperlinks (the analog of [some text](http://) in Markdown) to Haddock. That would make your package description look nicer and would be more widely useful.

[amigalemming]

Am 10.01.2014 15:56, schrieb Mikhail Glushenkov:

A better idea IMO is to add support for inline hyperlinks (the analog of
|some text| in Markdown) to Haddock. That would make your
package description look nicer and would be more widely useful.

I don't know whether this works reliably. The link to the other package
should at least be relative in order to work on Hackage mirrors as well.

There are certainly ways to achieve a "Related package" section without
special support. However, making the information explicit to Cabal and
Hackage may allow for automated features, like a recommender system.