[Haskell-cafe] expanded standard lib

[Johan Tibell]

> I would like to compare this to the GNOME development platform. It has
> Gtk+ at it's hart but GNOME releases are not synchronised with Gtk+
> releases. The GNOME development platform consists of a collection of
> standard packages. The collection is released on a time-based schedule,
> not a feature-based one. It puts a QA stamp on specific versions of its
> constituent packages that are known to work together. It has a procedure
> for getting packages included which include standards of API design and
> documentation. There is an infrastructure for maintaining, testing and
> releasing this platform.
>
> This is a model I think we should consider seriously.

This sounds like something worth trying to me. I'm trying to think of
libraries I would definitely see in such collection of libraries.
bytestring jumps to mind immediately. A fast and stable HTTP package
based on bytestring that supports developing web servers would be very
nice too (I'll work more on this when I have time). The idea is
basically that you implement a function of type:

myApp :: Application

where

type Environ = Map ByteString ByteString
type Headers = [(ByteString, ByteString)]
type Application = Environ -> IO (Headers, ByteString)

or something along those lines (i.e. a stream of user data is missing
in the above example). The point is that I want to be able to do:

import Network.WAI.Server (simpleServer)

main = simpleServer myApp

and have it just work. Sorry for the ramble. :)

Cheers,

Johan