[Haskell-cafe] Platform Versioning Policy: upper bounds are not our friends

[Chris Smith]

Twan van Laarhoven <twanvl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would adding a single convenience function be low or high risk? You say it
> is low risk, but it still risks breaking a build if a user has defined a
> function with the same name.

Yes, it's generally low-risk, but there is *some* risk.  Of course, it
could be high risk if you duplicate a Prelude function or a name that
you know is in use elsewhere in a related or core library... these
decisions would involve knowing something about the library space,
which package maintainers often do.

> I think the only meaningful distinction you can make are:

Except that the whole point is that this is *not* the only distinction
you can make.  It might be the only distinction with an exact
definition that can be checked by automated tools, but that doesn't
change the fact that when I make an incompatible change to a library
I'm maintaining, I generally have a pretty good idea of which kinds of
users are going to be fixing their code as a result.  The very essence
of my suggestion was that we accept the fact that we are working in
probabilities here, and empower package maintainers to share their
informed evaluation.  Right now, there's no way to provide that
information: the PVP is caught up in exactly this kind of legalism
that only cares whether a break is possible or impossible, without
regard to how probable it is.  The complaint that this new mechanism
doesn't have exactly such a black and white set of criteria associated
with it is missing the point.

-- 
Chris