GHC 7.8 release?

[Johan Tibell]

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 6:28 AM, Simon Marlow <marlowsd at gmail.com> wrote:

>  For a while we've been doing one major release per year, and 1-2 minor
> releases.  We have a big sign at the top of the download page directing
> people to the platform.  We arrived here after various discussions in the
> past - there were always a group of people that wanted stability, and a
> roughly equally vocal group of people who wanted the latest bits.  So we
> settled on one API-breaking change per year as a compromise.
>
> Since then, the number of packages has ballooned, and there's a new factor
> in the equation: the cost to the ecosystem of an API-breaking release of
> GHC.  All that updating of packages collectively costs the community a lot
> of time, for little benefit.  Lots of package updates contributes to Cabal
> Hell.  The package updates need to happen before the platform picks up the
> GHC release, so that when it goes into the platform, the packages are ready.
>
> So I think, if anything, there's pressure to have fewer major releases of
> GHC.  However, we're doing the opposite: 7.0 to 7.2 was 10 months, 7.2 to
> 7.4 was 6 months, 7.4 to 7.6 was 7 months.  We're getting too efficient at
> making releases!
>

I think we want to decouple GHC "major" releases (as in, we did lots of
work) from API breaking releases. For example, GCC has lots of major (or
"big") releases, but rarely, if ever, break programs.

I'd be delighted to see a release once in a while that made my programs
faster/smaller/buggy without breaking any of them.

-- Johan
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