Proposal process status

[Yuras Shumovich]

On Thu, 2016-07-21 at 10:32 -0400, Gershom B wrote:
> On July 21, 2016 at 8:51:15 AM, Yuras Shumovich (shumovichy at gmail.com
> ) wrote:
> > 
> > I think it is what the process should change. It makes sense to
> > have
> > two committees only if we have multiple language implementations,
> > but
> > it is not the case. Prime committee may accept or reject e.g.
> > GADTs,
> > but it will change nothing because people will continue using GADTs
> > regardless, and any feature accepted by the Prime committee will
> > necessary be compatible with GADTs extension.
> 
> I disagree. By the stated goals of the H2020 Committee, if it is
> successful, then by 2020 it will still for the most part have only
> standardized ony a _portion_ of the extentions that now exist today.

Yes, I know. But don't you see how narrow the responsibility of the
H2020 Committee is? GHC Committee makes all important decisions, and
H2020 just collects some of GHC extensions into a set of "standard"
ones. It is useful only when "nonstandard" extensions are not widely
used (e.g. marked as experimental, and are not recommended for day-to-
day use).

> 
> There’s always been a barrier between implementation and standard in
> the Haskell language, that’s precisely one of the things that _keeps_
> it from having become entirely implementation-defined despite the
> prevelance of extensions.

Unfortunately Haskell *is* implementation-defined language. You can't
compile any nontrivial package from Hackage using Haskell2010 GHC. And
the same will be true for Haskell2020. We rely on GHC-specific
extensions everywhere, directly or indirectly. If the goal of the
Haskell Prime is to change that, then the GHC-specific extensions
should not be first class citizens in the ecosystem. Otherwise there is
no sense in two committees.

We can continue pretending that Haskell is standard-defined language,
but it will not help to change the situation. 

> 
> Having two entirely different processes here (though obviously not
> without communication between the individuals involved) helps
> maintain that.
> 
> —Gershom
> 
>