Remove eq and show from num class

[Herbert Valerio Riedel]

On 2017-09-08 at 09:19:54 +0200, Anthony Clayden wrote:

[...]

> If this is to the committee, shouldn't it be on the committee list? 
> (I mean ghc-steering-committee.)

> Or is there some other committee? I thought the Haskell-prime forum
> and process was dead/replaced by the github proposals process?

I can see how the proliferation of committees & github repos may
seem confusing to casual observers, so let me provide a quick overview
which hopefully doesn't worsen the confusion... :-)

## Haskell Core Library Committee

 - https://wiki.haskell.org/Core_Libraries_Committee

Basically, the core library committee oversees decisions of what happens
with core libraries such as `base` which includes the API defined by the
Haskell library report. However, the Eq/Show=>Num superclass removal proposal
(<https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2011-September/016712.html>),
however predates the core libraries committee's existence (the CLC was
originally formed sometime around 2013 to design and manage big changes
such as the implementation of the Functor/Applicative/Monad proposal --
for which there was big community support but lack of leadership was
preventing its implementation).

Moreover, the CLC together with the Hackage Trustees also maintains the
https://github.com/haskell/pvp specification which is integral to the
way Hackage and the Cabal solver interact.

## Haskell Language Committee (aka Haskell Prime Committee)

 - https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-prime/2016-April/004050.html

So this committee's incarnation has just been formed last year; it's a
bit too early to declare it dead.

## GHC Steering Committee

 - https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/SteeringCommittee

This is mostly about user-facing changes to GHC and was created shortly
after the prime committee's formation was announced. It surely wasn't
intended to replace the prime committee, but was rather formed as a
reaction to complaints about GHC's governance, you can read up about its
intent at

 - https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/rethinking-proposals

Not all changes are even relevant to the Haskell Report (like
e.g. warning flags); but Report-relevant changes may start their
life-cycle as GHC extensions to get some empirical field-testing, and if
desirable to later be promoted to Haskell Prime proposals subject to the
Prime process.

## Other Committees

For completeness, here's a few other Haskell-related committees and/or
working-group like processes OTTOMH:

### Haskell.org committee

 - https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell.org_committee

### The Haskell.org Website Working Group (HWWG)

 - https://github.com/ndmitchell/hwwg

### Haskell Ecosystem Proposals

 - https://github.com/haskell/ecosystem-proposals

### Industrial Haskell Group

 - http://industry.haskell.org

### Commercial Haskell Group

 - https://github.com/commercialhaskell/commercialhaskell


HTH,
  HVR