[Haskell-cafe] Building "production stable" software in Haskell

[David Roundy]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2007 at 10:05:36AM +0100, Neil Mitchell wrote:
> > Would you care to explain why you have this aversion to libs that aren't
> > bundled with ghc?
> 
> They are less stable and have less quality control. It is also an
> additional burden for a user to install the library to get the program
> working.

This is basically the issue.  I've never used a Data.Map in any "real" code
(that was written by me... Data.Map is used in xmonad, upon which I hack,
but don't feel motivated to propose alternative requirements for
installation), only in toy codes.  And for that purpose, I didn't really
want to go to the trouble of seeking out and researching various
alternatives.

For a trivial "count the frequency of characters in a text file" toy code,
it hardly seems like a reasonable expectation that a beautiful
implementation should require the installation of extra libraries.

> cabal-install should fix the second. Some useful community feedback on
> hackage could fix the first. By removing most bundled libraries from
> GHC, we can get to the point where people _have_ to use non bundled
> libraries, then everyone will be on a more equal footing.

cabal-install may help, but what I'd really want is packaging in debian.
That's my (biased, because I used debian) standard of a "maintained, useful
library."  It's obviously a biased standard, but it isn't too hard for a
package to get into debian, and if it *does* get into debian, it suggests
someone cares about it.  I don't like requiring obscure packages that
perhaps have no code review, and perhaps have no users other than the
author.
-- 
David Roundy
Department of Physics
Oregon State University