[Haskell-cafe] Correspondence between libraries and modules

[Gregg Lebovitz]

On 4/24/2012 11:49 PM, wren ng thornton wrote:
> On 4/24/12 9:59 AM, Gregg Lebovitz wrote:
>> The question of how to support rapid innovation and stable
>> deployment is not an us versus them problem. It is one of staging 
>> releases. The
>> Linux kernel is a really good example. The Linux development team 
>> innovates
>> faster than the community can absorb it. The same was true of the GNU 
>> team.
>> Distributions addressed the gap by staging releases.
>
> In that case, what you are interested in is not Hackage (the too-fast 
> torrent of development) but rather the Haskell Platform (a policed set 
> of stable/core libraries with staged releases).

No, that was not what I was thinking because a stable policed set of 
core libraries is at the opposite end of the spectrum from how you 
describe Hackage. What I am suggesting is a way of creating an upstream 
that feeds increasingly stable code into an ever increasing set of 
stable and useful components. Using the current open system model, the 
core compiler team for gcc releases the compiler and a set of libstdc 
and libstdc++ libraries. The GNU folks release more useful libraries, 
and then projects like GNOME build on the other components. Right now we 
have Hackage that moves to fast and the Haskell core that rightfully 
moves more slowly.

Maybe the answer is to add a rating system to Hackage and mark packages 
as experimental, unsupported, and supported, or use a 5 star rating 
system like the app store. Later on when we have appropriate testing 
tools, we can include a rating from the automated tests.

>
> I forget who the best person to contact is these days if you want to 
> get involved with helping the HP, but I'm sure someone on the list 
> will say shortly :)
>