base package -- goals

[Ian Lynagh]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 06:38:46PM +0100, Herbert Valerio Riedel wrote:
> Ian Lynagh <ian at well-typed.com> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > If we did that then every package would depend on haskell2010, which
> > is fine until haskell2013 comes along and they all need to be changed
> > (or miss out on any improvements that were made).
> 
> ...wouldn't there also be the danger of type(class)-incompatible
> (e.g. the superclass breakages for startes) changes between say
> haskell2010 and haskell2013, that would cause problems when trying to
> mix libraries depending on different haskell20xx library versions?

I think that actually, for the Num/Show change, the hasell98/haskell2010
packages just incorrectly re-export the new class.

Personally, I don't think the language report should be specifying the
content of libraries at all, and I doubt anyone really uses the haskell*
packages. A separate library specification, perhaps based on the Haskell
Platform, would make more sense IMO. But that's another debate  :-)


Thanks
Ian