base package -- goals

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

|  I don’t feel in the position to actually make a call here, or even to cast a vote with
|  confidence, but I’m happy to continue summarizing the discussion until a
|  consensus is found. If there is more discussion, that is.

I've updated the page http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/SplitBase a bit.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of goals

A Better for external clients (stable APRs, few version bumps)
B Better for internal implementation (eg using containers or bytestring in base)

On the Wiki page, (G1) and (G2) are to do with group (A).  And this seems best handled by defining client-facing shim packages that export just what you want.

However (G4) and later seem to be concerned with (B), and they clearly do require re-structuring the code.

It seems entirely possible to me that BOTH will be needed.  That is, the structure to achieve (B) will not be precisely what is wanted for (A).  So it seems to be me that both approaches are valid and we might want to do both.  We can do them in either order, or simultaneously.  (Mind you, doing (A) first would make (B) less disruptive for our users.)

In short, less of an either/or, more of a both/and.

Simon

|  -----Original Message-----
|  From: glasgow-haskell-users-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:glasgow-haskell-users-
|  bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Joachim Breitner
|  Sent: 07 March 2013 20:22
|  To: glasgow-haskell-users at haskell.org
|  Subject: Re: base package -- goals
|  
|  Hi,
|  
|  Am Dienstag, den 26.02.2013, 10:08 +0000 schrieb Simon Peyton-Jones:
|  > I think it would be vv helpful to have all these goals articulated on
|  > the wiki page.
|  >
|  >          http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/SplitBase
|  >
|  
|  well, all the goals are there (or are they not sufficiently well explained)?
|  
|  I also tried to compare the two approaches – the re-exporting API-specifying
|  packages and the actual split of base – by listing their advantages (I skipped the
|  disadvantages, these would just be the negation of the other advantages list...) at
|  http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/SplitBase#Approaches
|  
|  I don’t feel in the position to actually make a call here, or even to cast a vote with
|  confidence, but I’m happy to continue summarizing the discussion until a
|  consensus is found. If there is more discussion, that is.|  
|  Greetings,
|  Joachim
|  
|  --
|  Joachim "nomeata" Breitner
|  Debian Developer
|    nomeata at debian.org | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Keyid: 4743206C
|    JID: nomeata at joachim-breitner.de | http://people.debian.org/~nomeata