Integrating editline with ghc

Christian Maeder Christian.Maeder at dfki.de
Tue Jan 22 07:29:53 EST 2008


Yitzchak Gale wrote:
> We should not cause people's programs to break silently by
> changing a fundamental API, unless there is no alternative.
> In this case there is a reasonable alternative. Anyone who wants
> to change over to editline - native or readline-compatible - can
> easily do so, at their leisure. Anyone who wants things to stay
> the way they are can do nothing.

1. Things don't break silently (I hope), they break during compilation.
2. With every new ghc major version (or library version) there is a list
of user visible changes.
3. if ghci is going to use editline (at least on Macs by default) then
readline would not need to be a core package und users might need to
install package readline explicitely. (Then at least everybody using
readline has to do something manually, at least users on Macs who
complain most if something does not run out of the box.)

> Do you see any problem with that approach?

No, I've only pointed out the alternative, I hope.
I don't know what fits the needs of the majority most. Let's vote?

Christian


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