Please don't deprecate Haskell 98 modules.

[Jesper Louis Andersen]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:25 AM, John Lato <jwlato at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I was originally in favor of deprecating haskell98 but didn't care
> enough to voice an opinion.  John's argument has convinced me
> otherwise, so +1 to keeping haskell98.
>

In the Standard ML world, there was some traction on the idea of ML
Basis (MLB) files

http://mlton.org/MLBasis

The concept is, superficially, to support linkage and module work "in
the large" contrast to "in the small" which most module systems are
about.

As an example, you can pull a set of modules and in the process rename
them such that they do not conflict with yours. Or you can do the
opposite and export modules under different names than what you used
internally.

The real killer in this discussion is the ability to include a module
hierarchy from an older version of the standard library. Writing

local
  $(SML_LIB)/basis/basis-1997.mlb
in
  prog.sml
end

gives you the old (deprecated) SML Basis, whereas the declaration

local
  $(SML_LIB)/basis/basis.mlb
in
  prog.sml
end

gives you the newest basis hierarchy. Thus in effect, the system
supports the old code through a simple redeclaration of what library
to pull in.

More information is available at the link above, including examples of
how to support module import/export renaming.

-- 
J.