genBits: small addition to random API + largely new implementation that needs code review

[Thomas DuBuisson]

Ian Lynagh <igloo at earth.li> wrote:
> Ryan Newton wrote:
>>
>> So it seems random was due for an overhaul.  I would like to initiate a
>> discussion period to talk about what changes should happen before the next
>> major release.  I think this is timely because there is *already* a pending
>> backwards-incompatible change in the API (factoring out the SplittableGen
>> class) <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/4314>.  We might as well
>> make any other fixes now and make all the changes at once.
>
> I believe the only reason we're shipping random with ghc is that
> haskell98 and haskell2010 depend on it.
... snip...

> Perhaps we should fork random as old-random
>
> This would probably imply the next Haskell' release not specifying
> System.Random.
>
> Any thoughts?

H2010 already doesn't specify Random, unless I missed something.  H98
needs patching already now that the Splittable patch was accepted (or
did someone already do this?).

I've never liked the "old-*" package renaming as that already
introduces (minor) breakage and doesn't seem to encourage people to
move forward.  Why avoid using versioning and build-deps for this
(adding a version bound is similar work to adding "old-")?

Cheers,
Thomas