Proposal process status

[Carter Schonwald]

On Wednesday, July 20, 2016, Ben Gamari <ben at well-typed.com> wrote:

> Yuras Shumovich <shumovichy at gmail.com <javascript:;>> writes:
>
> > Looks like reddit is a wrong place, so I'm replicating my comment here:
> >
> Thanks for your comments Yuras!
>
> >>   * Do you feel the proposed process is an improvement over the
> >> status quo?
> >
> > Yes, definitely. The existing process is too vague, so formalizing it
> > is a win in any case.
> >
> Good to hear.
>
> >>   * What would you like to see changed in the proposed process, if
> >>     anything?
> >
> > The proposed process overlaps with the Language Committee powers. In
> > theory the Committee works on language standard, but de facto Haskell
> > is GHC/Haskell and GHC/Haskell is Haskell. Adding new extension to GHC
> > adds new extension to Haskell. So I'd like the process to enforce
> > separation between experimental extensions (not recommended in
> > production code) and language improvements. I'd like the process to
> > specify how the GHC Committee is going to communicate and share powers
> > with the Language Committee.
> >
> To clarify I think Language Committee here refers to the Haskell Prime
> committee, right?
>
> I think these two bodies really do serve different purposes.
> Historically the Haskell Prime committee has been quite conservative in
> the sorts of changes that they standardized; as far as I know almost all
> of them come from a compiler. I would imagine that the GHC Committee
> would be a gate-keeper for proposals entering GHC and only some time
> later, when the semantics and utility of the extension are
> well-understood, would the Haskell Prime committee consider introducing
> it to the Report. As far as I understand it, this is historically how
> things have worked in the past, and I don't think this new process would
> change that.
>
> Of course, let me know if I'm off-base here.


As one of the 20 members of the Haskell (Prime) 2020 committee id like to
interject on this front: the preliminary discussions the committee has had
thus far had a clear agreement that we shall aim to be a bit more
progressive about what shall be included in the standard. The main bar will
be the extent to which features or capabilities can be articulated without
over specifying implementation details and can tractably have compatible
but different compilers for the standard.

  I think some of the other prime committee members can articulate this a
bit better than I, so don't hold me to this precise phrasing ;)




>
> Cheers,
>
> - Ben
>
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