GHC 7.8 release?

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

On 10/02/2013 21:43, Ian Lynagh wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 09:30:23PM +0000, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
>> |  > You may ask what use is a GHC release that doesn't cause a wave of updates?
>> |  And hence that doesn't work with at least some libraries.  Well, it's a very useful
>> |  forcing function to get new features actually out and tested.
>> |  
>> |  But the way you test new features is to write programs that use them,
>> |  and programs depend on libraries.
>>
>> That is of course ideal, but the ideal carries costs.  A half way house is a release whose library support will be patchy.
> 
> But that's not what happens. GHC 7.8 is released. Someone installs it in
> order to try to use TypeHoles when developing their program. But their
> program depends on text, so they send Bryan a mail saying that text
> doesn't build with 7.8. And so the wave of updates begins.

As the maintainer of a low-level package (HTTP), I certainly see this
kind of pressure starting even before a GHC release - e.g.
https://github.com/haskell/HTTP/issues/36

As one of the maintainers of a high-level tool (darcs) that aims to
always build against the current HP, I generate this kind of pressure
myself: once GHC is released, I expect it to be in the HP within 3-6
months, so I need to get started quickly. I can't even check darcs
itself until the dependencies work.

I don't think there are any easy answers :-/

Ganesh