[Haskell-cafe] The instability of Haskell libraries

[Ross Paterson]

On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 08:21:04PM +1000, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:
> Mads Lindstrøm <mads.lindstroem at gmail.com> writes:
> > But that would be an API change. It is of cause a question of how strict
> > we want to be. I have seen several times that commercial software
> > developers denies changes bugs, as the fix would constitute API changes.
> > We obviously do not want to go there, but we could bump the version
> > number as it would require little work.
> 
> I would argue that it would involve bumping a minor version number, not
> a major version number (which indicates an API change) since it's just a
> bug fix.

I think we need a simpler, declarative, definition from which these
details can be worked out, e.g.

Same minor version: any code that worked with the old version will
work with the new version, in the same way.

Same major version: any code using fully explicit imports that worked
with the old version will work with the new version, in the same way.