GHC section of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report, May 2014 edition

[Simon Peyton Jones]

Austin, Mihai, GHC devs

This is about the GHC section of the HCAR.  

Up to now, we have written a status report on the GHC Wiki (you can see them stretching back several years), and the HCAR team have generously done the conversion to Latex.  Mihai, I hope that is still OK.

Austin: you are the Managing Editor for the GHC status report.  Could you 
 * take a look at what has happened in the last six months 
   (the 7.8 release notes would be a great start)
 * draft an outline for the report
 * delegate writing tasks to the rest of us

By "writing task" I mean typically only a paragraph or two (see past reports), but specifically including pointers to further reading. Really every substantial item should have such a pointer.  The status report should be a jumping off point for someone who wants to know more.

There are technical things (eg pattern synonyms), but let's not forget the important process things (eg changes to the repository structure).

All GHC devs: do feel free to add things that Austin omits. In particular, he may not be aware of "what's on the horizon" things that you are working on.


Austin, do you think you could complete the sketch, and delegate tasks, as soon as the 7.8 release is out (which should only be hours away)?  So it should be done by the end of this week.

Thanks all

Simon

| -----Original Message-----
| From: Haskell [mailto:haskell-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Mihai
| Maruseac
| Sent: 05 April 2014 15:28
| To: haskell; haskell at haskell.org
| Subject: [Haskell] Call for Contributions - Haskell Communities and
| Activities Report, May 2014 edition
| 
| Dear all,
| 
| I would like to collect contributions for the 24th edition of the
| 
| ================================================================
|              Haskell Communities & Activities Report
| 
| http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Communities_and_Activities_Rep
| ort
| 
|                 Submission deadline: 1 May 2014
| 
|      (please send your contributions to hcar at haskell.org,
|                  in plain text or LaTeX format)
| ================================================================
| 
| This is the short story:
| 
| * If you are working on any project that is in some way related
|   to Haskell, please write a short entry and submit it. Even if
|   the project is very small or unfinished or you think it is not
|   important enough --- please reconsider and submit an entry anyway!
| 
| * If you are interested in an existing project related to Haskell that
|   has not previously been mentioned in the HCAR, please tell me, so
|   that I can contact the project leaders and ask them to submit an
|   entry.
| 
| * Feel free to pass on this call for contributions to others that
|   might be interested.
| 
| More detailed information:
| 
| The Haskell Communities & Activities Report is a bi-annual overview of
| the state of Haskell as well as Haskell-related projects over the
| last, and possibly the upcoming six months. If you have only recently
| been exposed to Haskell, it might be a good idea to browse the
| previous edition --- you will find interesting projects described as
| well as several starting points and links that may provide answers to
| many questions.
| 
| Contributions will be collected until the submission deadline. They
| will then be compiled into a coherent report that is published online
| as soon as it is ready. As always, this is a great opportunity to
| update your webpages, make new releases, announce or even start new
| projects, or to talk about developments you want every Haskeller to
| know about!
| 
| Looking forward to your contributions,
| 
| Mihai Maruseac and Alejandro Serrano Mena (current co-editors)
| 
| 
| FAQ:
| 
| Q: What format should I write in?
| 
| A: The required format is a LaTeX source file, adhering to the template
| that is available at:
| 
|      http://haskell.org/communities/05-2013/template.tex
| 
| There is also a LaTeX style file at
| 
|      http://haskell.org/communities/05-2013/hcar.sty
| 
| that you can use to preview your entry. If you do not know LaTeX, then
| use plain text. If you modify an old entry that you have written for an
| earlier edition of the report, you should already have received your old
| entry as a template (provided I have your valid email address). Please
| modify that template, rather than using your own version of the old
| entry as a template.
| 
| Q: Can I include Haskell code?
| 
| A: Yes. Please use lhs2tex syntax
| (http://people.cs.uu.nl/andres/lhs2tex/).
| The report is compiled in mode polycode.fmt.
| 
| Q: Can I include images?
| 
| A: Yes, you are even encouraged to do so. Please use .jpg format, then.
| 
| Q: Should I send files in .zip archives or similar?
| 
| A: No, plain file attachements are the way.
| 
| Q: How much should I write?
| 
| A: Authors are asked to limit entries to about one column of text. A
| general introduction is helpful. Apart from that, you should focus on
| recent or upcoming developments. Pointers to online content can be given
| for more comprehensive or "historic" overviews of a project. Images do
| not count towards the length limit, so you may want to use this
| opportunity to pep up entries. There is no minimum length of an entry!
| The report aims for being as complete as possible, so please consider
| writing an entry, even if it is only a few lines long.
| 
| Q: Which topics are relevant?
| 
| A: All topics which are related to Haskell in some way are relevant. We
| usually had reports from users of Haskell (private, academic, or
| commercial), from authors or contributors to projects related to
| Haskell, from people working on the Haskell language, libraries, on
| language extensions or variants. We also like reports about
| distributions of Haskell software, Haskell infrastructure, books and
| tutorials on Haskell. Reports on past and upcoming events related to
| Haskell are also relevant. Finally, there might be new topics we do not
| even think about. As a rule of thumb: if in doubt, then it probably is
| relevant and has a place in the HCAR. You can also ask the editor.
| 
| Q: Is unfinished work relevant? Are ideas for projects relevant?
| 
| A: Yes! You can use the HCAR to talk about projects you are currently
| working on. You can use it to look for other developers that might help
| you.
| 
| Q: If I do not update my entry, but want to keep it in the report, what
| should I do?
| 
| A: Tell the editor that there are no changes. The old entry will
| typically be reused in this case, but it might be dropped if it is older
| than a year, to give more room and more attention to projects that
| change a lot. Do not resend complete entries if you have not changed
| them.
| 
| Q: Will I get confirmation if I send an entry? How do I know whether my
| email has even reached the editor, and not ended up in a spam folder?
| 
| A: Prior to publication of the final report, the editor will send a
| draft to all contributors, for possible corrections. So if you do not
| hear from the editor within two weeks after the deadline, it is safer
| to send another mail and check whether your first one was received.
| 
| 
| --
| Mihai Maruseac (MM)
| "If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to
| learn." -- Atlas Shrugged.
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