[ghc-steering-committee] Proposal: Type Fixity (#65), Recommendation: Reject

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

the type fixity proposal
(https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/65)
was met with mixed reactions.

 * I recommended rejection and Manuel strongly agrees with me.
 * SPJ does not have strong opinions either way.
 * Richard is in favor, and Iavor agrees.


Our process says “If consensus is elusive, then we vote, with the
Simons retaining veto power.” It looks like this might be such a case.
Should we go ahead and vote, or is more discussion likely to sway some
of us?

(I guess I can be swayed towards acceptance, especially if this
proposal re-uses existing syntactic idioms from export lists with
ExplicitNamespaces on.)

Greetings,
Joachim



Am Sonntag, den 27.08.2017, 20:16 +0200 schrieb Joachim Breitner:
> Dear Committee,
> 
> Ryan Scott’s proposal to allow fixity declaration to explicitly target
> values or types has been brought before us:
> https://github.com/RyanGlScott/ghc-proposals/blob/type-infix/0000-type-infix.rst
> https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/65
> 
> I (the secretary) nominates myself as the shepherd, so I can right away
> continue giving a recommendation.
> 
> I propose to reject this proposal. The main reasons are:
>  * it is not clear if there is a real use case for this. Has anyone
>    ever complained about the status quo?
>    The proposal does not motivate the need for a change well enough.
>    (There is a related bug in TH, but that bug can probably simply be 
>    fixed.)
>  * The status quo can be sold as a feature, rather than a short-coming.
>    Namely that an operator has a fixed fixity, no matter what namespace
>    it lives in.
>    This matches morally what other languages do: In Gallina, fixity
>    is assigned to names independent of their definition, AFAIK.
>  * There is a non-trivial implementation and education overhead, a
>    weight that is not pulled by the gains.
> 
> If we’d design Haskell from scratch, my verdict might possibly be
> different (but maybe we wouldn’t even allow types and values to share
> names then…)
> 
> 
> Please contradict me or indicate consensus by staying silent.
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> Joachim
> 
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-- 
Joachim Breitner
  mail at joachim-breitner.de
  http://www.joachim-breitner.de/

-- 
Joachim “nomeata” Breitner
  mail at joachim-breitner.de
  https://www.joachim-breitner.de/
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