Add haskell-src as an official machine-readable component of the Haskell standard

[Neil Mitchell]

There is nothing to stop an library author doing exactly this, and it
might even be useful for some people (personally I'm going to stick to
haskell-src-exts, because it's a brilliant library). However, I don't
think we should make it official or part of the standard. I've found
plenty of HSE/GHC parsing differences in my work, and my suspicion is
that several of them are probably also present in haskell-src. I also
don't want the Haskell Prime Committee to take on the jobs of library
maintainership or implementation, those are best kept elsewhere.

Thanks, Neil

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 9:13 AM, Yitzchak Gale <gale at sefer.org> wrote:
> I propose that the haskell-src package be renamed
> haskell20nn-src for each revision Haskell 20nn of
> the standard, and be made an official machine-readable
> component of the standard.
>
> This has the following advantages:
>
> 1. It would require almost no extra work, because
> haskell-src already exists, and syntax changes, if
> any, will be very minimal for each revision.
>
> 2. For the portion of the standard that it covers,
> any ambiguity that might creep into the human-readable
> standard document would be resolved.
>
> 3. It would serve as a basic machine-verification tool
> which is easily extensible.
>
> 4. As a side-effect, the haskell-src package would be
> continually maintained. The package is useful in its
> own right as a much lighter-weight version of haskell-src-exts.
> It is much easier to use when an application does
> not require full support of all of Haskell's syntax.
>
> This proposal is a natural extension of a proposal
> raised on the libraries mailing list in the context of
> the Haskell Platform: Ian Lynagh proposed that the
> current haskell-src-exts be renamed haskell-src
> (and included in the Haskell Platform, as suggested
> by Sterling Clover), and that the current haskell-src
> be renamed to haskell98-src (and removed from the
> Platform).
>
> The libraries subthread is here:
>
> http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2010-November/015018.html
>
> Thanks,
> Yitz
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