New libraries process

[Daniel Fischer]

On Thursday 19 May 2011 10:35:21, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
> 
> It's a draft.  What do you think of it?  Do you think it would be better
> than the status quo?  Can you suggest any improvements?

It's much better than the status quo, I think.

I have, however, a problem with section 3, Portability:

"At the very least ensure the code runs in Hugs and GHC, and on Windows and 
Linux. "

I don't have access to a Windows box, so *I* cannot ensure the code runs on 
Windows.
And if the code involved doesn't make use of any OS-specific functions or 
libraries, like purely numerical code in base, if it worked on one OS but 
not on another, something lying deeper would be broken.

So, can we weaken the above?
I'm not sure what exactly to require and how to phrase it, but I think 
along the lines of
- if possible, test on all OSs
- if the code makes use of OS-specific functions, somebody must have tested 
it on each of the major OSs before it can go in
- if the code cannot reasonable be expected to be OS-dependent, testing on 
one should be enough

> 
> ALSO: does anyone (or two or three people) want to volunteer to act as
> maintainer for any of the "Volunteer needed" packages?  Johan, I was
> thinking you might serve for 'containers', perhaps in harness with
> someone else since it is such a crucial package.

I would be willing to be co-maintainer of random, mtl or containers.
I could be persuaded to become sole maintainer of some of them if 
necessary.

> 
> Simon