Dependencies/backwards compatibility in Hackage

[Ross Paterson]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2007 at 05:29:44PM +0100, Sven Moritz Hallberg wrote:
> What's wrong with the solution I proposed, i.e. to add an explicit field
> to the package description which states whether we broke compatibility
> or not? It's effectively the same as a version numbering convention
> without having to tell everyone how to assign their numbers. Don't get
> me wrong, I'd be all for a consistent numbering scheme. Is everyone else
> also?

With version numbers, it suffices that each author has a rule of
incrementing at a certain level if compatibility is broken.  It need
not be the same level for different packages (though that would be
less confusing).  They might have two levels of compatibility: merely
adding functions, types or classes will not break any clients that use
explicit imports.