[ghc-steering-committee] Call for votes: Shall we have GHC2023

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

unsurprisingly, I vote

Am Sonntag, dem 22.01.2023 um 13:40 +0100 schrieb Joachim Breitner:
>   Should we proceed towards GHC2023?

Yes!


Brief summary of why:

 * One goal of GHC20xx was to fix one problem we had with the
   Haskell20xx process: New releases were rare, small and eventually
   stopped. So I want GHC20xx to not fall in the same trap of being
   over-cautious when making releases.

 * A early and small(!) (e.g. just adding role annotations) release 
   gives both us and the community a chance to practice. It is a good
   way to learn that new GHC20xx releases are _not_ a big deal, and
   those users who upgrade will learn that upgrading is (well, can be)
   totally painless. I’d like to let them have such a positive
   experience.

 * Assuming that every GHC20xx is “better” in some sense than the 
   previous, and even if it is just mild QoL improvements, I see little
   gain in holding that back longer than necessary.

 * GHC20xx releases are lower pain than GHC releases or base changes!

   A new version of GHC you _have_ to upgrade to get important fixes. 
   A new version of base you _have_ to upgrade to, else you cannot get
   new versions of your dependencies. These upgrades are forced on the
   user, with only limited wiggle room.

   A new GHC20xx is totally optional. Your -XGHC2021 code will just 
   continue to work as you upgrade GHC. So if it is _less_ disruptive,
   why have a longer cadence?

   Or, as a friend of mine nicely put it: Even if there are users out 
   there that are best served by having GHC2021, GHC2024, GHC2027…, 
   they are free and welcome to only bump their edition every three
   years. Also having GHC2023 and GHC2025 … does not in any way impact
   them.

   So because of their opt-in, usually-pinned nature, backward compat
   worries need not restrict us here, I’d say.
  

Hence I’d like to define a GHC2023 (in time for GHC 9.8?). And I
wouldn’t worry about a _fixed_ cadence until we had two or three
releases and learned from it.

Cheers,
Joachim


-- 
Joachim Breitner
  mail at joachim-breitner.de
  http://www.joachim-breitner.de/