[Haskell-cafe] importing Distribution.Compat.FilePath fails

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

> > It is my intention to try and get this FilePath library into the base,
>
> please no!!! why you don't understand that including in base means
> death of development for any library! are you really want that anyone
> who need new version of your lib should recompile GHC himself?!

I consider the FilePath library to be complete, and somewhat frozen
already. I doubt that people need many other features - so I don't
think thats the end of the world.

I have split my FilePath library into System.FilePath (which I want
included in base) and System.FilePath.Version_0_10 (which people
should currently import) - that way there are no conflicts, and in a
few years time everyone can use System.FilePath instead of the version
specific one, and everyone will be happy. I don't propose to break any
current users at any point.


> libs should be included in "base libs" set and i proposed a few months
> ago to radically extend it by including fundamental libs, including
> FilePath. but base library, which contains ghc-version specific code
> and can't be upgraded using cabal, should not evolve. see our
> discussion in libraries maillist

I think that FilePath should be in the current base library, as its
standards go. Once your work to split base up into just the compiler
dependant bits is done then I think it should be moved out, but I
suspect that this work won't happen until 6.10 or later, so it
deserves to go in the base library now.

Anyway, I think we can have a big discussion on this when the time
comes - so any discussion now would just be preempting things.

Thanks

Neil