MTL vs Transformers. Any status update?

[Michael Snoyman]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 9:02 PM, Duncan Coutts <duncan.coutts at googlemail.com
> wrote:

> On Sun, 2009-11-29 at 13:35 +0000, Ross Paterson wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 01:03:06PM +0000, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2009-11-28 at 16:56 +0000, Ross Paterson wrote:
> > > > On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 04:40:49PM +0000, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> > > > > Could someone remind me why it's better for use to ask everyone to
> > > > > switch to monads-fd / transformers rather than to mtl-2? Does that
> make
> > > > > the transition easier?
> > > >
> > > > The problem is that transformers and mtl use the same module names,
> > > > such as Control.Monad.Identity.  Unless one of these packages is
> hidden,
> > > > people using ghci or ghc --make will have problems.
> > >
> > > Right, so having transformers + mtl is bad, but why do we want to end
> up
> > > with a situation where we have both? If you've all agreed what should
> go
> > > into the new monad package, can't we call that mtl-2 ? Why would we
> want
> > > to define things in one package and re-export them in another?
> >
> > Because there is not one new monad package, but two.  The idea is to
> > split the mtl package to decouple monad transformers from functional
> > dependencies.  The transformers part can then be used in Haskell 98 code,
> > or with type classes using type functions.  Exposed modules from mtl are
> > split between the resulting two packages, so neither is a replacement for
> > mtl-1.  As I said above, having both would be a transitional arrangement,
> > on the way to replacing mtl with the two packages split from it.  mtl-2
> > is an attempt to smooth that transition, but it would eventually go away.
>
> Ok, how about this:
>
> transformers    H98 bits, registered hidden by default
> mtl 2           re-exports transformers, adds type function stuff
> mtl-fd          alternative that uses FDs, hidden by default
>
> I'm not sure what you agreed, if you chose the FD one as default then
> use mtl-tf as the alternative. Whichever you have chosen as the
> recommended stuff should be called mtl 2, because that is the easiest to
> explain to everyone.
>
> So all the packages now using mtl-1, move up to mtl 2. Then for packages
> that only want transformers, they depend on transformers. Similarly for
> the mtl-fd alternative (and whether that re-exports transformers or
> whether such packages should depend on transformers + mtl-fd is up to
> you).
>
> Users of ghci / ghc --make will end up using mtl 2 by default and there
> will be no module name clashes because transformers and mtl-fd will by
> hidden by default (Cabal-1.6+ can do that). The hiding does not affect
> cabal packages of course.
>
> Duncan
>
> Are you saying that mtl-2 would be the equivalent of transformers +
monads-tf? That might not be a good call; monads-fd is probably more popular
than monads-tf.

Michael
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/attachments/20091129/93a41853/attachment-0001.html