Typechecker plugins and 7.10

[Richard Eisenberg]

As I'm referenced here, I'll speak up: yes, I think we should advertise that the plugin interface is purely a technology preview, and very subject to change. I'm sure that as users adopt this powerful new feature, they and we will discover ways that it could be improved, or perhaps ways that it can subvert GHC, or etc. In order to have a tighter feedback loop between devs and users, I think that updating this part of GHC between minor releases is appropriate, for the 7.10 cycle. Hopefully, a year from now, we'll be ready to stabilize and then offer a more concrete implementation for 7.12.

Of course, I'm curious to hear others' opinions on this!

Thanks,
Richard

On Dec 12, 2014, at 3:50 AM, Adam Gundry <adam at well-typed.com> wrote:

> Hi Austin, devs,
> 
> I'm not sure what stage the 7.10 branch split and RC have got to, but if
> possible I'd like to get Phab:D553 included (my special pleading is that
> it makes relatively small, self-contained changes that will make it
> slightly harder to shoot oneself in the foot when writing a plugin). I
> realise you have to say "no" at some point though!
> 
> More generally, at Richard's suggestion I propose that (at least for
> 7.10) we explicitly make no guarantees about the stability of the
> TcPluginM API, and advertise that we may choose to make breaking changes
> between minor GHC releases. After all, this feature is highly
> experimental and tightly coupled to GHC itself.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Adam
> 
> 
> -- 
> Adam Gundry, Haskell Consultant
> Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/
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