Request for feedback: deriving strategies syntax

[Andres Loeh]

> It might be a tongue-in-cheek suggestion, but I _really_ like it. It
> captures the intended semantics better than any other previous
> suggestion, I think. And we're already going to be appropriating a new
> keyword with "anyclass", so why not take "bespoke" as well? :)

It doesn't have to be a "keyword" in the sense of reservedid, right?

>> I thought about verbosity here, and it's not clear which one is more verbose. For example, I frequently define a new newtype and then wish to use GND to derive a whole host of instances. In this case (is it common?), `deriving (X, Y) deriving newtype (A,B,C,D,E,F)` is shorter than putting newtype on each class name.
>
> That's a good point. Another thing to consider is that I suspect in
> 90% of the time, users are only going to be reaching for
> -XDerivingStrategies in the scenario when they enable both
> -XGeneralizedNewtypeDeriving and -XDeriveAnyClass. That will happen
> when they want to derive instances for newtypes, and as you said, you
> typically derive several instances at a time when defining newtypes.
> Therefore, it seems less noisy to factor out the deriving strategy
> names so that readers can tell at a glance which batch of instances
> are newtype-derived and which are anyclass-derived, instead of having
> to read a keyword before every single type.

Yes, you've convinced me that putting the strategy once in front is at
least not worse.

> Plus, on a superficial level, I like keeping the deriving strategy
> name outside of the parentheses. I think it makes clear that these
> keywords aren't modifying the type we're deriving, only the means by
> which we're deriving it. Of course, you may feel differently than I
> do, so please speak up if you disagree!

The very first times when I've talked to others about this feature, I
think I've always used "deriving (Eq via bespoke, Monad via gnd)" as
syntax, but yes, in general I agree that keeping it completely out of
the parentheses may be a mild advantage.

Cheers,
  Andres