hackage-deps: incorrect not found check

[jakubdaniel]

hackage-deps claims to check existence of package (say 3d-graphics-examples) by looking for packages that depend on it. If there are none then not found badge is returned, instead of checking the dependencies of 3d-graphics-examples.

[chris48s]

Thanks for reporting this. I'm not haskell programmer but I did add this error handling.

We had to use a workaround to try and work out if a package is indexed due to snoyberg/packdeps#35 - see #1416 (for discussion on adding the error handling).

My instinct is that we should change from using the /reverse endpoint to the /licenses endpoint as a proxy:
http://packdeps.haskellers.com/reverse/3d-graphics-examples
http://packdeps.haskellers.com/licenses/3d-graphics-examples

As someone more familiar with the haskell community, does that seem reasonable @jakubdaniel ?

[jakubdaniel]

Is there a reason why not simply use hackage.haskell.org/package/..., which seems to return 404 too if the package is not known? If the point is to avoid discrepancies between hackage.haskell.org and packdeps.haskellers.com, then the licenses endpoint might do. I am not affiliated with neither though, so don’t take my word for it :).

[chris48s]

If the point is to avoid discrepancies between hackage.haskell.org and packdeps.haskellers.com,

Yes - this was the situation we're trying to guard against, although I'm unclear whether this is a likely condition. Given Hackage requires all packages to be published under an open source license I've submitted PR #1506 proposing to change to the /licenses endpoint. Hopefully this will be a good solution.