[Haskell] base libraries

[Malcolm Wallace]

Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com> wrote:

>         http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/PackageReorg
> 
> I'd be interested to know whether the proposal has general support;

Yes, it has my general support.  The proposed terminology is good.

> what goals are omitted;

Possibly the following are just more detailed expansions of the existing
two goals:

  * Forwards compatibility.  Users would like their programs written
    against the 'core' packages to continue to work, without
    modification to source text or build system, after upgrading the
    compiler, or its packages, or switching to a different compiler.
  * Backwards compatibility.  Users would like to be able to take a
    program written against some version of the 'core' packages, and
    build it with an older compiler, accepting that they may have to
    install newer versions of the 'core' packages in order to do so.

It may not be possible to fully achieve these goals (in particular the
latter), but that does not mean we should not aim for them.

Regards,
    Malcolm