Libraries and hierarchies

[Alastair Reid]

>   3. As (2), but the full name of a module is not fixed in the source
> code,
>      and can be mapped into the hierarchy at multiple places.
>
>      [...]
>
> This suffers from 
>(a) extra complication in the implementation and specification
>    of the language,

I wonder if the extra complication is really that high.
Suppose that every module somehow has a unique name 
(128 bit hash, global registry, whatever) and that we have
setup two mappings to the same thing:

   Foo.Bar      -> Reid.Consulting.Bar.version27
   Baz.Bar      -> Reid.Consulting.Bar.version27

to implement this in Hugs, it is _almost_ enough to simply
run all source code through a preprocessor which replaces 
occurences of Foo.Bar and Baz.Bar with Reid.Consulting.Bar.version27.

Suppose a module imports both Foo.Bar and Baz.Bar.
The Haskell compiler will see this as two imports of  
Reid.Consulting.Bar.version27 and will recognise that any types they define 
are the same type.

This simple minded lexical substitution approach would fail in the usual 
places that applying a preprocessor fails: inside strings, when a module name 
is also used as a constructor name, etc.  It would also interact with 
qualified import.  For this reason, the substitution needs to happen inside 
the parser or early parts of the frontend.  We'd also want to generate good 
error messages so there would be a small change there as well.  Overall, I 
think it would be quite a small change.


>(b) needing unique package names,

The original proposal tied this feature strongly to packages.  I wonder if 
this is really necessary.

Putting that aside, it seems that unique package names are fairly easy to come 
by.  Some possibilities are:

1) Use the URI of the primary download site.
   From choice, the URI would be for a tarfile or whatever
   but all that really matters is that it is unique.
   This will typically include a version number but, if not,
   the user could add one if they care.

2) In the likely event that we have a few big repositories 
   and many small ones, simply prefix the name of the package
   by the repository name or, if not available, name of author.
   This is effectively the same as (1) but avoids using URIs.

3) Directory name on your system.

   This would be a little like the current situation with Hugs where
   you add -P options to the command line to add each package to
   the searchpath.


>(c) referring unambiguously to a specific library must be done
>    by GUID.

Rephrasing this as 'can be done by GUID', I would list this as a strength.

--
Alastair Reid