Changes to Typeable

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

|  - Will it be possible to write e.g. deriving instance Typeable Eq?

Not at the moment; we've only been thinking about Typable for things whose kinds bottom out in *, not Constraint.  There doesn't seem to be any fundamental obstacle -- but I can't yet see how it would be useful.

|  - How about deriving instance Typeable Typeable? (It seems Proxy Proxy
|  works, so maybe this would too.)

Ditto. 

|  - Does it make sense to have an instance for (~)?

Ditto.

|  - Will instances be provided for the types in base and built-in to GHC?

Yes, that would make sense.

|  Automatically generate Typeable instances for every type constructor
|  that is declared. 'deriving Typeable' becomes a no-op.

Well, at the moment a type ONLY becomes an instance of a class if you ask for it to be so, so your proposal would be a change of principle.  Sometimes *omitting* an instance declaration may be important (eg to prevent a type being serialisable).   That said, I can't see when I'd want a type not to be Typeable.  I suppose it could be a compiler option.  I think the questions here are ones of software engineering rather than being technical.

Simon