GHC 7.8 release?

[Ian Lynagh]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 02:28:20PM +0000, Simon Marlow wrote:
> 
> So I think, if anything, there's pressure to have fewer major
> releases of GHC.  However, we're doing the opposite: 7.0 to 7.2 was
> 10 months, 7.2 to 7.4 was 6 months, 7.4 to 7.6 was 7 months. We're
> getting too efficient at making releases!

7.2 was billed as a "technology preview" rather than a regular stable
release. However, it still required just as much effort as a regular
stable release, both for us (we probably spent just as much time trying
to make it bug-free, making builds, making docs, etc) and for the
community (libraries still needed to adjust dependencies etc).

One result of that extra effort was that the 7.4 release got delayed,
and the delay was magnified by pushing it over the Christmas period.

7.6 was released roughly according to the regular yearly release plan
(although the 7.4 delay made the gap between the two shorter).


So in my opinion, 7.2 was a bad idea (but I don't think anyone knew that
before we tried it), and I'd agree that we'd be better sticking to
not-more-than-yearly major releases.

I wouldn't oppose less-than-yearly (e.g. every 18 months) if that makes
life easier for distros, library maintainers, the HP, etc. But I
wouldn't advocate it either; from GHC's point of view, historically
we've always had enough new stuff to justify a new major release after a
year.


Thanks
Ian
-- 
Ian Lynagh, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/