Rethinking GHC's approach to managing proposals

[Simon Peyton Jones]

Just to be clear:

* We are actively seeking feedback about the proposal [4] below.
  It's not a fait-accompli.

* You can join the dialogue by (a) replying to this email,
  (b) via the "Conversations" tab of [4], namely
      https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/1
  Doubtless via reddit too!

  If you don't like something, the more specific and concrete you
  can be about a better alternative, the better.  E.g. Richard's
  comments on the "conversations" tab both ask questions and propose
  answers.  Bravo!

Simon

| -----Original Message-----
| From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Ben
| Gamari
| Sent: 09 July 2016 21:46
| To: GHC developers <ghc-devs at haskell.org>; ghc-users <glasgow-haskell-
| users at haskell.org>
| Subject: Rethinking GHC's approach to managing proposals
| 
| Hello everyone,
| 
| Recently there has been a fair bit of discussion[1,2] around the
| mechanisms by which proposed changes to GHC are evaluated. While we have
| something of a formal proposal protocol [3], it is not clearly
| documented, inconsistently applied, and may be failing to serve a
| significant fraction of GHC's potential contributor pool.
| 
| Over the last few weeks, I have been doing a fair amount of reading,
| thinking, and discussing to try to piece together a proposal scheme
| which better serves our community.
| 
| The resulting proposal [4] is strongly inspired by the RFC process in
| place in the Rust community [5], the leaders of which have thought quite
| hard about fostering community growth and participation. While no
| process is perfect, I feel like the Rust process is a good starting
| point for discussion, offering enough structure to guide new
| contributors through the process while requiring only a modest
| investment of developer time.
| 
| To get a sense for how well this will work in our community, I propose
| that we attempt to self-host the proposed process. To this end I have
| setup a ghc-proposals repository [6] and opened a pull request for
| discussion of the process proposal [4].
| 
| Let's see how this goes.
| 
| Cheers,
| 
| - Ben
| 
| 
| [1]
| https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.red
| dit.com%2fr%2fhaskell%2fcomments%2f4oyxo2%2fblog_contributing_to_ghc%2f&
| data=01%7c01%7csimonpj%40064d.mgd.microsoft.com%7c99735311c5f64cac6a6608
| d3a83a032a%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1&sdata=Hl6GqRWfu7IOQtpE
| jpfsNAkv3mmLgNKm2ciQDoMe6HA%3d
| [2]
| https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.red
| dit.com%2fr%2fhaskell%2fcomments%2f4isua9%2fghc_development_outsidein%2f
| &data=01%7c01%7csimonpj%40064d.mgd.microsoft.com%7c99735311c5f64cac6a660
| 8d3a83a032a%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1&sdata=bj2AQqQirX3X%2f
| 4%2fFr05eXFuD4yW0r9Nmrmdg7IGEF%2f8%3d
| [3]
| https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/WorkingConventions/AddingFeatures
| [4] https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-
| proposals/pull/1/files?short_path=14d66cd#diff-
| 14d66cda32248456a5f223b6333c6132
| [5] https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs
| [6] https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals