Configurable cabal strictness

[glasserc]

At work we're trying to set up a private hackage repository which can host our libraries and any software which uses those libraries. We got hackage-server up and running OK, but when we tried to upload packages to it, we got some error messages, which I believe come from "cabal check":

* The 'license' field is missing or specified as AllRightsReserved.

* 'ghc-options: -Wall -Werror' makes the package very easy to break with
future GHC versions because new GHC versions often add new warnings. Use just
'ghc-options: -Wall' instead.

For the first, we think AllRightsReserved is the "correct" license for not-open-source software that we do not want to distribute outside the company.

For the second, we would like to use -Werror as a programmatic way to enforce that code should not have warnings. We understand that in the wider world of the Internet, -Werror can cause problems, but we think that within the controlled environment of our company, we can manage with it. (If a new version of GHC finds something to warn about in a library, we will immediately fix the library.)

It seems to me that Hackage/Cabal should provide some setting where as administrators of the Hackage server, we can tell it, "No, really, -Werror and AllRightsReserved are OK". However, I couldn't find any such setting.

[dcoutts]

You're right, this should be configurable. The code currently comes from Cabal. We should work out a way to make it a bit more selective. Suggestions and patches most welcome. Supporting in-house servers is definately a goal for the hackage code base.

[dcoutts]

The first issue is fixed. The check on all rights reserved is now in the hackage-server, not in Cabal, and it's off by default in the hackage-server (but turned on in the central community instance).

Issue about -Werror remains.

[MichaelXavier]

I've noticed something odd. Let me know if this is too off topic and I'll create another ticket. I've copied the convention of lens of adding a flag 'lib-werror', that defaults to False, manual as True. Even though -Werror is under this flag. I know I've seen this as a warning before and it still accepted it but as of today, it marks my package as invalid and rejects it.