Whither split base?
Vanessa McHale
vanessa.mchale at iohk.io
Tue Oct 30 14:56:01 UTC 2018
This would break a lot of packages for the relatively small benefit of
finer grained dependencies.
On 10/30/18 8:35 AM, Andrew Martin wrote:
> Here's my stab at a more aggressive split:
>
> * base: everything not removed by the libraries below
> * concurrency: all Control.Concurrent.* modules (depends on base)
> * foreign: all Foreign.* modules (depends on base)
> * event-manager: all GHC.IO.* modules, System.Timeout (depends on
> base, foreign, concurrency)
>
> There would be some additional trickery. The stuff in
> Control.Concurrent that deals with event registration would need to be
> moved somewhere else. But I think this would more-or-less work.
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:54 AM Andrew Martin
> <andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com <mailto:andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> For additional clarity, I should mention that I am looking for
> low-hanging fruit here. The higher and tastier fruit would of
> course be splitting out the event manager and all the file handle
> logic with it. But that would be difficult, both in terms of the
> actual work required and in terms of achieving a consensus.
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:47 AM Andrew Martin
> <andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com <mailto:andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> We could also move out all the modules underneath
> Control.Concurrent (but not Control.Concurrent itself) except
> for the MVar module. We would have to leave that one because
> there is a bunch of other stuff in base that uses MVar. These
> modules have demonstrated less stability than
> System.Console.GetOpt and Text.Printf, and there are competing
> implementations in other libraries.
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:42 AM Andrew Martin
> <andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com <mailto:andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> The benefit is certainly small, and it probably would
> discourage using the API. I don't think that the migration
> path would be tricky. The new package would just reexport
> Text.Printf when built with base < 4.13, and it would
> define it when built with base >= 4.13. All that is
> required is a build-depends line. However, people really
> shouldn't be using this API in library code. Other modules
> in base provide more efficient and more type-safe ways
> handle most of the situations I've seen this used for.
>
> I've never used System.Console.GetOpt (I'm typically use
> optparse-applicative for option parsing), but yes, I think
> that would also be a good candidate. Since there are
> multiple competing approach for argument parsing in the
> haskell ecosystem, my preference would be to avoid
> blessing any of them with inclusion in base.
>
> I don't feel particularly strongly about either of these,
> but their position in base feels odd. They both feel like
> the result of applying a "batteries included" mindset to a
> standard library that has by and large refrained from
> including batteries.
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:17 AM Herbert Valerio Riedel
> <hvriedel at gmail.com <mailto:hvriedel at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
> On 2018-10-30 at 08:04:59 -0400, Andrew Martin wrote:
> > Here's an idea for this I had last night. It's
> narrowly scoped, but I think
> > it moves us a tiny bit in the right direction. We
> could move Text.Printf
> > out of base and into its own library. This doesn't
> really belong in base.
> > The interface it provides it somewhat opinionated,
> and it's not even
> > type-safe. The new library could be named `printf`
> and could live under the
> > haskell github organization. Any thoughts for or
> against?
>
> Ok, but what does this effectively achieve?
>
> Text.Printf is an API that has been extremely stable
> and doesn't
> significant evolve anymore; I don't think it has
> contributed to major
> ver bumps in recent times, nor is it likely to. So I
> don't see much of a
> compelling benefit in doing so. The effect I'd expect
> if we do this is
> that `Text.Printf` will be reached for less (which
> some might argue to
> be a desirable effect -- but you're effectively
> pushing this API to a
> path of slow legacy death due to reduced
> discoverability, IMO), as the
> convenience of using it is reduced by requiring adding
> and maintaining
> an additional `build-depends` line to your package
> descriptions, as well
> as having to deal with the subtly tricky business of
> handling the
> migration path pre/post-split (c.f. the `network-bsd`
> split currently
> being in progress).
>
> Btw, a related extremely stable API in base I could
> think of which
> people might argue doesn't belong into `base` either
> is maybe
> `System.Console.GetOpt`; would you argue to split that
> off as well?
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>
> --
> -Andrew Thaddeus Martin
>
>
>
> --
> -Andrew Thaddeus Martin
>
>
>
> --
> -Andrew Thaddeus Martin
>
>
>
> --
> -Andrew Thaddeus Martin
>
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