Module versions

[Dylan Thurston]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 03:35:31PM +0000, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
> > > The implication of the Std. namespace is that all such "standard"
> > > libraries will be distributed with all Haskell systems.  In other
> > > words, you can rely on a standard library always being there, and
> > > always having the same interface on all systems.
> > 
> > What's about version changes? How can anybody garantee that a library is
> > stable?  Some functions or instances may become obsolete or even disappear.
> > Other may be needed in later versions of the library.
> 
> We can't provide absolute guarantees of course.  But this is no
> different from the situation with standard libraries in other languages
> - witness the difficulties with libc versions etc.  I think the best
> we can do realistically is to aim for maximum stability.

But note that there is a well-defined "soname" mechanism in the Unix
world to deal with this issue.  This usually works on the object level
rather than the source level; it is usually hard to compile against an
old version of the library (without renaming the library to include a
version number).

Probably we don't need to worry about this now.

Best,
	Dylan Thurston