GHC 7.8 release?

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

, even a point release (7.6.2 vs. 7.6.1) of ghc tends to be moderately violent with respect to the Platform.  Ideally, such a point release should not be difficult to slot in because it should be compatible modulo bug fixes, but with ghc's release strategy nobody has any confidence in it being that simple.

Well our clear intention for point releases (7.6.1 to 7.6.1) is that they should break nothing. I am concerned that in your experience point releases are “moderately violent”. We go to some pains to make sure that we don’t break anything.    If we don’t succeed on this point-release policy, please do tell us when the release candidate comes out.  If we don’t know we are causing pain, we can’t stop inflicting it :-)

(Major releases are another matter.  There, things are likely to break.)

Simon

From: Brandon Allbery [mailto:allbery.b at gmail.com]
Sent: 09 February 2013 13:41
To: Simon Peyton-Jones
Cc: Carter Schonwald; Manuel Chakravarty; parallel-haskell; Mark Lentczner; GHC Users List; ghc-devs at haskell.org; Edsko de Vries
Subject: Re: GHC 7.8 release?

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 6:27 AM, Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com<mailto:simonpj at microsoft.com>> wrote:
In short, I think we already have the situation that you desire.  Perhaps we just need to market it better?

Or am I mistaken?

Except the current question is about how ghc releases interact with the Platform; this thread was set off by a question about getting 7.6.2 into the next Platform....

And the main issue there is that ghc releases tend to break things and need a lot of testing in general to make it into the Platform; while this would be expected anyway, even a point release (7.6.2 vs. 7.6.1) of ghc tends to be moderately violent with respect to the Platform.  Ideally, such a point release should not be difficult to slot in because it should be compatible modulo bug fixes, but with ghc's release strategy nobody has any confidence in it being that simple.

--
brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine associates
allbery.b at gmail.com<mailto:allbery.b at gmail.com>                                  ballbery at sinenomine.net<mailto:ballbery at sinenomine.net>
unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad        http://sinenomine.net
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