Request for feedback: deriving strategies syntax

[Ryan Scott]

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

Correct, it's only a keyword when used in the context of deriving,
similar to how "role" is only a keyword in the context of "type role".
You could still define, say, `id role = role` if you so wished.

Ryan S.

On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Andres Loeh <mail at andres-loeh.de> wrote:
>> 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