[Haskell-cafe] Notes from "Haskell takes over the world" BoF at ICFP
Don Stewart
dons at galois.com
Wed Oct 6 15:10:35 EDT 2010
Here are the notes transcribed from the Future of Haskell BoF held
after the Haskell Symposium last week.
-- Don
= Future of Haskell BoF Notes =
A "birds of a feather" meeting was held at ICFP, organized by Bryan and
Johan. We had 30 (?) people in a room, for 2 hours, discussing how to
ensure Haskell succeeds.
These are the transcribed notes.
== Libraries ==
* Need to encourage special interest groups (SIGs) to form around
particular domain areas in the libraries. AI, BioInf, Networking,
etc.
* Document the SIG process: what resources they have, how you get
results.
* Missing SIGs for certain platforms: Mac, CentOS etc.
* More tutorials on use of Haskell in particular domains.
* Keen for Hackage 2.0 quality review tools: embedded wikis, voting
* Hackage analysis tools: reverse indexing of the code base.
* There is no PVP tool.
* Library fragmentation occuring due to type duplication (String, Text, ...)
* Focus on intitiatives for common, core types. HP polish.
* What is the "Son of Containers" going to be?
* Build reports would help the community a lot. Integrated with
Hackage. Haddock pages on hackage should be editable wikis
(per-top-level function, dvcs backed? record history, captchas. roll
back spam, by default assume good contributions)
* Need to register patches to packages with lost maintainers.
* Belgium Hackathon coming up.
* Improve libraries process: esp. for small contributions.
* Hackage maintainance:
+ maintainer timeout.
+ hackage package clobbering.
+ tweaks. hackage-local .cabal fixes.
* Unclear what the rules for contributing are. Document them!
* In particular, document how to contribute to:
* ghc
* cabal
* core and HP
* hackage
* dockathon
== IDEs ==
* A new ghci.
+ scriptable, scion-server?
+ repls on top of ghc-api
+ ruby repl
+ .ghci
+ documentation
+ hpaste/ghci.
* IDE
+ scion. contributions. market places.
+ documentation.
+ EclipseFP, scion?
+ NetBeans.
* Special Interest Groups
+ as the vehicle for domain projects.
+ formal process for forming a group.
+ a small amount of structure for groups
+ document process for forming a strike team.
* haskell.org
+ polishing the wiki.
+ wikibooks.
+ call for sig.
* haskell visual design group?
+ consistent color themes across haskell.org sites.
+ consistent haskell branding.
* community server mailing lists in poor state
* Move community more online ? Community services.
+ google groups
+ digests.
+ reply at the right point in the threads.
+ serious lists.
+ ghc users. libraries.
+ announces.
+ stackoverflow for new questions?
+ keep refering to SO.
+ reddit for news?
== GHC ==
* ghc status
+ 50% split in room on moving ghc from darcs to git.
+ bug reports and interaction load with ghc
+ well documented workflow for lightweight changes
+ heavy weight process for major work.
+ bugs, tickets.
+ Simon Marlow "contributions are going up, and process is working well"
* Release schedule.
+ RC at ICFP.
+ GHC release page.
+ HP/GHC release.
+ stage releases.
+ more clearly announced that ghc will be a beta prior to GHC HP.
* HP, uses GHC installers as is. GHC zip.
== Teaching / tutorials ==
* Tutorials. Documentation.
+ Writing a blog post that is wrong is a pretty good way to get feedback.
+ Find a forum to ask the question, so the answer is findable.
+ Ask on SO.
+ Clojure and Scala communities have active blog spheres.
+ they love descriptions of data structures
+ e.g. high fanout trees.
+ Aggregating the ephemera.
+ Archives: Haskell Reddit has all the interesting blog posts.
-- Haskell Wikibook.
* Cabal and integration with other languages.
+ Easier integration with C.
+ Higher barrier to entry on the Mac.
+ Playing well with other languages?
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