[ghc-steering-committee] #190: Module qualified syntax, recommendation: accept

[Simon Peyton Jones]

I agree.  It’s a tiny, superficial thing, but it’s clearly egregiously annoying to some pretty experience users, who use Haskell at scale.  So yes, we should do this.

My only question is: do we really need a  flag.  Suppose we simply accepted the postfix “qualified” with no flag support.  Then a program will be accepted that earlier compilers would have rejected – and, absent a flag, we normally try to continue to reject programs that weren’t legal before.  But in this case no one is going to fall into this by mistake.  I suggest we consider simply allowing it as an exception to our general rule, and move on.

Simon

From: ghc-steering-committee <ghc-steering-committee-bounces at haskell.org> On Behalf Of Simon Marlow
Sent: 08 March 2019 08:32
To: Joachim Breitner <mail at joachim-breitner.de>
Cc: ghc-steering-committee at haskell.org
Subject: [ghc-steering-committee] #190: Module qualified syntax, recommendation: accept

Proposal #190 is about accepting the syntax

  import A.B.C qualified

instead of (or in addition to) the existing syntax

  import qualified A.B.C

I think it's widely accepted that the original syntax was a mistake. I don't need to rehash the rationale for the change here, iit's described pretty well in the proposal and elaborated in the discussion.

The question for us is really: is it worth changing? There are costs:
- A new extension flag, which itself has costs (extra documentation, a new thing that people need to understand)
- new code using the extension doesn't compile with older compilers
- all the existing code in the world uses the old convention
- etc.

Reasonable people can differ here. The discussion on the proposal has representatives from both sides of the camp.

Personally, the current syntax annoys me almost every day. It's already a small cost on everyone, and I think we need to move forwards even if there are costs in migrating. So, I'm going to recommend that we accept this proposal.

We might want to reconsider the name of the extension: QualifiedImportsPostpositive seems like a mouthful. Perhaps ImportQualifiedPost is enough?

Cheers
Simon

On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 at 12:09, Joachim Breitner <mail at joachim-breitner.de<mailto:mail at joachim-breitner.de>> wrote:
Dear Committee,

this is your secretary speaking:

Module qualified syntax
has been proposed by Shayne Fletcher
https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/190<https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fghc-proposals%2Fghc-proposals%2Fpull%2F190&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7Caf28d349cc4b4dcc2c9708d6a3a09262%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636876307377122036&sdata=j2ADKb66m6dLG4JNJD4t37U5jF3Kooh4nWLYx0BPU9I%3D&reserved=0>
https://github.com/shayne-fletcher-da/ghc-proposals/blob/module-qualified-syntax/proposals/0000-module-qualified-syntax.rst<https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fshayne-fletcher-da%2Fghc-proposals%2Fblob%2Fmodule-qualified-syntax%2Fproposals%2F0000-module-qualified-syntax.rst&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7Caf28d349cc4b4dcc2c9708d6a3a09262%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636876307377132029&sdata=bRsO6Tt9pqe3peTWlWm5fkIvLX35fCOCwJpY6WyTQ1o%3D&reserved=0>

Simon Marlow has already volunteered to shepherd.

Please reach consensus as described in
https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals#committee-process<https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fghc-proposals%2Fghc-proposals%23committee-process&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7Caf28d349cc4b4dcc2c9708d6a3a09262%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636876307377132029&sdata=Fl4isHNP4fJq%2FRvdhofK8HJeTEJ6jCsEIgtTH0uZdFs%3D&reserved=0>
I suggest you make a recommendation, in a new e-mail thread with the
proposal number in the subject, about the decision, maybe point out
debatable points, and assume that anyone who stays quiet agrees with
you.

Thanks,
Joachim
--
Joachim Breitner
  mail at joachim-breitner.de<mailto:mail at joachim-breitner.de>
  http://www.joachim-breitner.de/<https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.joachim-breitner.de%2F&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7Caf28d349cc4b4dcc2c9708d6a3a09262%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636876307377142023&sdata=haZTJI6ivDUviYGAUO7vISNU%2F9wNhfK%2FuZxII01dE5k%3D&reserved=0>

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