Proposal: Make `NFData` a fundamental/primitive type-class (by making `deepseq` a GHC-boot package)

[Ian Lynagh]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 03:23:04PM +0200, Gregory Collins wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Herbert Valerio Riedel <hvr at gnu.org> wrote:
> > Proposal:
> > ~~~~~~~~~
> >
> > Make `NFData` a fundamental/primitive type-class
> > (by making `deepseq` a GHC-boot package)
> >
> > Moreover, this would pave the way for a future proposal to merge the
> > `deepseq` into `base` at some later point.
> 
> I'm strongly in favour of this also. IIRC Ian was the one who objected
> most strenuously last time. What sayest thou, Ian?

In general, my opinion is still that we should be trying to make base
smaller, not larger. Some stats:

Directory:              ghc-7.0.4/libraries/base    ghc-7.2.1/libraries/base
Size:                   2.8 MB                      3.2 MB
Exposed GHC.* modules:   62                          69
Exposed other modules:   90                         102
Private GHC.* modules:   12                          12
Private other modules:    0                           3
Total modules:          164                         186
{-# SOURCE #-} imports:  12                          18

[for those stats, I pretended System.Event* was called GHC.Event* in 7.0]


That's just my opinion, though.


Thanks
Ian