Can we do better than duplicate APIs? [was: Data.CompactString 0.3]

[Benjamin Franksen]

Jean-Philippe Bernardy wrote:
> Please look at
http://darcs.haskell.org/packages/collections/doc/html/Data-Collections.html
> for an effort to make most common operation on bulk types fit in a
> single framework.

The last time I looked at this (shortly after you started the project) I
wasn't sure if I would want to use it. Now it seems like an oasis in a
desert to me. I am pretty much impressed, for instance, you managed to
unify all the nine existing 'filter' types into a common type class. Cool.

The only hair in the (otherwise very tasty) soup is "Portability: MPTC, FD,
undecidable instances" which doesn't sound like it is going to replace the
Prelude any time soon ;-) Never mind: I definitely consider using this
instead of importing all these different Data.XYZ modules directly (and,
heaven forbid, having to import them qualified whenever I need two of them
in the same module).

Do you forsee any particular obstacle to an integration (=providing the
appropriate instances) of e.g. CompactStrings? I would even try to do this
myself, as an exercise of sorts. How difficult is it in practice to work
with 'undecidable instances'? Are there special traps one has to be careful
to walk around?

> Also, we expect indexed types to solve, or at least alleviate, some
> problems you mention in your "rant".
> http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/Indexed_types

I have been hoping for that to resolve (some of) our troubles, but have been
confused by the all the back and forth among the experts about whether they
offer more, or less, or the same, as MPTCs+fundeps+whatever (and that they
will probably not go into Haskell').

BTW, any reason I didn't find your collections library in the HackageDB
(other than stupidity on my part)? (Just interested, I already found the
darcs repo.)

Cheers
Ben

PS: Since I read and post to the Haskell lists via gmane and a news client:
Do mail clients usually respect the follow-up header, such as I insert when
cross-posting, so as to restrict follow-ups to the intended list?