Haskell library infrastructure coordinator

[Simon Marlow]

=20
> Shae Matijs Erisson owns the >haskell-libs< project at
> sourceforge.net, and we figured this would be a good platform for the
> effort.

I just wanted to point out that there's some overlap between what you're
doing in the haskell-libs project, and what's going on here on the
libraries list.  It's best not to duplicate effort if we can avoid it.

> The idea is to set-up a CVS repository, which contains the
> following directories:
>=20
>  - hslibs
>=20
>    Here do the actual source codes live, using a directory layout
>    complying to the hierarchical library structure, for example:
>=20
>        - Text
>        - Data
>        - Foobar
>=20
>    The contents is by-approval-only:

We have a name registry for the hierarchy, and an (albeit informal)
approval policy, here:

  http://www.haskell.org/~simonmar/libraries/libraries.html

I don't quite understand the purpose of the hslibs libraries: are you
providing a replacement set of libraries, or a complementary set?

I believe it's important that there be one place which lists (a) which
names in the hierarchy correspond to existing libraries, and (b) where
to get an implementation of those libraries.

>    These libraries serve as a quasi-extension of the libraries shipped
>    with ghc/hugs/nhc98. Ideally, everybody would be able to use them
>    by just checking out this directory and adding it to the compiler's
>    search path.

Just adding to the search path in GHC is unlikely to work - you really
want to hook into the package system, and you'll need a build system of
some kind.

Cheers,
	Simon