9.4 release planning (& GHCJS merge process)

Wed Feb 23 18:31:45 UTC 2022

Hi Matthew!

1 & 3. Thank you very much for the information. :)

2 & 4. I'm slightly concerned that you seem to leave this kind of 
decision to "the community", because last time I heard, the weekly 
meetings of GHC developers are not necessarily advertised to said 
community, and I fail to see how much of a democratic process it can be 
if a significant portion of the decision-making process is done outside 
of the community that you wish to make responsible for such important 
things as LTS statuses  (which is widely, widely incompatible with the 
adoption of Haskell as a reliable foundation for industrial usage).

Moreover, if memory serves well, it was the GHC DevOps Group that pushed 
for the 6-months release schedule (or at least I get a strong impression 
of it reading this thread 
https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devops-group/2017-October/000067.html). 
Now looking at the mailing-list and updates, it would seem that the 
group has disbanded, but I find it too bad that current GHCHQ doesn't 
take on the responsibilities that are rightfully yours.

My question is: Do you intend to provide the community with the proper 
information and means to make a decision, or at least express their 
opinion? Or would you be rather more comfortable with the small subset 
of people who post on ghc-devs to voice their opinion on the matter and 
follow the trend? Is GHCHQ bound to these "community opinions"? Or can I 
just pay WT to have it do what I want if I wish to decide on a different 
course of action for the GHC release cycle. ;)

There is one point that you make that is quite worrisome:

 > I suggest that the decision about whether the 9.4 release will attain 
a similar
 > status is left to the community rather than us (the developers) who
 > lack perspective about how companies are using releases unless 
explicitly told about it.

I sincerely believe that there is something lost in translation, because 
from my ESL (English as a Second Language) perspective, this looks like 
the 5-people team in charge of the compiler do not have any say in what 
to release, when or even have no access to wider community information, 
like what the State of Haskell Ecosystem surveys provide. But maybe 
you'd like more help to figure out what are the broader usages of GHC, 
and I can assure you that the Haskell Foundation would be immensely glad 
to provide such insights.

And just so we are clear, I have nothing to reproach in terms of 
engineering, it's all been wonderful from my perspective as both a 
hobbyist and industrial user, and I know that product management isn't 
necessarily the reason why you signed in on this, but it's an 
unfortunate and essential part of the job that I'd like to clear out, 
for everyone's sake.  :)
Please do not take this as an attack against you and your team, and I'm 
truly sorry if my phrasing have led to think so.

Cheers,
Hécate

Le 23/02/2022 à 16:55, Matthew Pickering a écrit :
> 1. We will provide a migration guide. The draft for the guide is
> located here - https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/migration/9.4
>
> 2. 8.10 has never officially been an LTS but due to various reasons
> has been a larger number of backports than other releases. I suggest
> that the decision about whether the 9.4 release will attain a similar
> status is left to the community rather than us (the developers) who
> lack perspective about
> how companies are using releases unless explicitly told about it.
>
> 3. The likely highlights was a list produced by Ben after the 9.2
> release was finalised. Most (if not all) the features on the list will
> be present in the release. Of course, comprehensive release notes will
> be produced which detail all the new features and changes.
>
> 4. It is an unfortunate fact that whatever the proposed release
> schedule has been that the releases have never actually come at those
> timings. Again, I think we have to defer the question about release
> frequency to the wider community. The decision about this release
> cycle was made after considering the state of the master branch, which
> features we wanted in the release and the availability of the release
> managers.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Matt
>
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2022 at 7:34 PM Hécate <hecate at glitchbra.in> wrote:
>> Hi Matthew, thank you for this update and the other one regarding your team.
>>
>> I have multiple questions regarding the release:
>>
>> 1. Could a migration guide be provided? Or better, a script/tool? From
>> what I understand, going from 9.2 to 9.4 means breaking changes have
>> been introduced.
>>
>> 2. The 8.10 series has gained a status of LTS amongst industrial users,
>> thanks to both the numerous backports but also the wider support in the
>> ecosystem. Could you please clarify whether or not it will still be an
>> LTS after this release, and the status of 9.0 and 9.2 (which have
>> brought numerous new things themselves but seem to have been quickly
>> replaced by the next release each time). It's quite confusing, and when
>> the question arises in professional circles, a (seemingly) valid answer
>> that is brought up is "We can wait 6 more months and have a breaking
>> release that will force us to migrate painfully, let's not move yet".
>>
>> 3. From what I can see in the "Likely highlights" (this phrasing is
>> unclear to me, you don't expect some of those changes to make it to the
>> release?), it is mostly an engineering release (which is great). Do you
>> think that the 9.4 series could benefit from the same longevity as the
>> 8.10 did and take its place as a continuously-improved version while
>> Language / R&D versions of GHC are published anew?
>>
>> 4. There was a talk of slowing the release schedule to once a year, and
>> last I heard, Ben was sympathetic to it. Could you express the official
>> position of your team on the matter?
>>
>> Again, I'd like to echo Richard's words in the other thread, thank you
>> and your team for all this work, this is immensely appreciated.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Hécate
>>
>> Le 22/02/2022 à 18:14, Matthew Pickering a écrit :
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Firstly we are anticipating branching 9.4 in about 6 weeks time
>>> (approx start of April). Most of the major features originally
>>> milestoned[1] for this release have landed and the main branch is
>>> currently in a nice state. This timeline will be solidified once the
>>> 9.2.2 release has been completed.
>>>
>>> The major outstanding work that I am aware of is
>>>
>>> Windows toolchain work (#21019) (Ben Gamari)
>>> Partial Register Stall (#20405) (Andreas Klebinger)
>>> hi-haddock (!6224) (Zubin Duggal / Matthew Pickering )
>>> Directed Coercions (!6476) (Sam Derbyshire)
>>>
>>> Secondly, we are anticipating adding a javascript backend inspired by
>>> GHCJS as the highlight of the 9.6 release. This work is led by the
>>> team at IOHK.
>>>
>>> * The planning and progress of this process is tracked on this wiki
>>> page - https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/javascript-backend
>>> * We anticipate reviewing and merging patches incrementally into a
>>> feature branch until the point where test coverage is suitable and the
>>> patches can be merged into the main branch.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Matt
>>>
>>>
>>> [1]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/milestones/370
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> ghc-devs mailing list
>>> ghc-devs at haskell.org
>>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
>> --
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>> IRC: Hecate
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>>
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-- 
Hécate ✨
🐦: @TechnoEmpress
IRC: Hecate
WWW: https://glitchbra.in
RUN: BSD