Move to pcre2

[dvzrv]

Hi! 👋

I package pcre2 for Arch Linux. We are currently working on moving from pcre (unmaintained) to pcre2.

Not having any details on this project's situation: Would it be possible for this project to either drop the dependency on pcre-light or start relying on e.g. https://github.com/sjshuck/hs-pcre2 instead?

[nomeata]

It would certainly be possible. Is it a drop-in replacement, or is there a migration guide somewhere? Of course, patches are welcome :-)

[nomeata]

BTW, someone should probably update https://wiki.haskell.org/Regular_expressions to point people to pcre2 and mention that pcre is unmaintained.

[martinvonwittich]

Debian unfortunately seems to have removed arbtt from its repository due to this dependency :(

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1026136

[nomeata]

That was opened in December 2022, and nobody thought of informing upstream about it? That’s a bit unfortunate.

[nomeata]

Hmm, I was just about to fix this, but I noticed that pcre2 isn't, for example, packaged in Debian. So I wonder: is that really the future-proof package for PCRE functionality to use? Are there alternatives to consider?

It seems that text-icu provides regex, and is available both in Debian and Arch. I am a bit hesitant, in case users use regex syntax of features that are very pcre specific.

[natrys]

I noticed that pcre2 isn't, for example, packaged in Debian

It is though? Since Debian 10 it seems: https://packages.debian.org/source/buster/pcre2

[nomeata]

That's the C library, but not the Haskell bindings, isn't it?

[natrys]

Oh I see what you meant. I didn't even know Debian has such granular Haskell packages in general (but I suppose I should have, from the context of this issue about Arch). My distro just uses stack/cabal and calls it a day.