[Haskell-cafe] Support for library improvement

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

Am Donnerstag, den 08.10.2015, 13:05 -0400 schrieb Richard Eisenberg:
> On Oct 8, 2015, at 9:55 AM, Ben Gamari <ben at smart-cactus.org> wrote:
> >  With a few changes to our treatment of warnings
> > and some new pragmas (aimed at library authors), we can greatly
> > reduce
> > the impact that library interface changes have on users.
> 
> My loose following of the interweaved threads has led me to this same 
> conclusion. Have you paid close enough attention to list exactly what 
> these changes should be? I have not. But I'd love to find a general 
> solution to the migration problem so that we can continue to tinker 
> with our beloved language without fear of flames burning down the 
> house.

how willing are we to make the compiler smarter and more complicate to
make sure old code does what it originally meant to do, as long as it
is among the (large number close to 100)% common case?

For example, in this case (as was suggested in some trac ticket, I
believe), ignore a method definition for a method that
 * is no longer in the class and
 * where a normal function is in scope and
 * these are obvious equivalent
where obvious may mean various things, depending on our needs.

One could think this further: If the compiler sees a set of Applicative
and Monad instances for the same type in the same module, and it has
"return = something useful" and "pure = return", can’t it just do what
we expect everyone to do manually and change that to "pure = something
useful" and remove return?

In other words, can we replace pain and hassle for a lot of people by
implementation work (and future maintenance cost) for one or a few
people?

Or will that lead to another hell where code does no longer mean what
it says?

Greetings,
Joachim

-- 
Joachim “nomeata” Breitner
  mail at joachim-breitner.de • http://www.joachim-breitner.de/
  Jabber: nomeata at joachim-breitner.de  • GPG-Key: 0xF0FBF51F
  Debian Developer: nomeata at debian.org

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