[Haskell-cafe] instance Binary UTCTime (Was: Oprhan instances)

[Duncan Coutts]

On Sun, 2009-11-29 at 16:42 -0500, David Menendez wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Duncan Coutts
> <duncan.coutts at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2009-11-26 at 16:40 -0500, David Menendez wrote:
> >
> >> The problem with this solution is that it doesn't scale. If we have M
> >> packages providing types and N packages providing classes, then we
> >> need M*N additional packages for orphans.
> >>
> >> The best long-term solution is probably extending Cabal to handle this
> >> more transparently, perhaps by allowing packages to depend on flagged
> >> versions of other packages (e.g., foomonad >= 4.0 && < 4.1 && HAS_MTL)
> >
> > Not going to happen. Such packages could not be translated into binary
> > distro packages.
> 
> Do you mean that specific idea won't happen, or that no attempt will
> be made to reduce the orphan problem?

I mean specifically proposal to change the Cabal package semantics such
that they cannot be translated into native system binary packages on
various platforms.

It's vital to distributing our work that we can produce sensible binary
packages on the platforms that people want to use.

I should also note that distros will not look kindly on solutions that
require N * M separate packages.

Duncan