[Haskell-cafe] haskell platform question

[Brandon Allbery]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 07:34, Tim Docker <twd2 at dockerz.net> wrote:
> On 07/06/2011, at 8:48 PM, Don Stewart wrote:
>
>> Oh, sorry, missed the first line. Building against GHC snapshots isn't
>> supported.
>
> Surely wanting to test against a ghc snapshot isn't that odd? How

The point of the Haskell Platform is to provide a tested, stable
configuration.  While testing against newer versions is in some sense
good, it is fully expected to require tweaking.  The HP *is* the box;
change anything and you are outside the box and nothing is guaranteed.

> do others go about testing their code with many hackage dependencies against
> a new ghc? I would have expected that the first thing to do would be get the

We don't, for the most part; ghc is a quickly moving target and
usually has multiple type theory experiments going on in its code, and
it's best to avoid new versions until they stabilize and any core
dependents are updated.  GHC announcements will often mention how
usable the release is expected to be for us non-type theorists.
Unless you're a ghc hacker, you shouldn't in general rush into a new
ghc version.  (This isn't Linux.  The bleeding edge is for type
theory, not geeks.)