Proposal: Changes to the PVP

[David Thomas]

Might there be benefit to combining 3 and 4, making the stable subset
explicit (perhaps supported by tests so as to be machine checkable)?
On Apr 9, 2014 1:47 AM, "Michael Snoyman" <michael at snoyman.com> wrote:

> I would like to propose the following changes to the PVP. These are the
> same changes that I recently published on the Yesod blog[1]. For more
> information on the motivations behind these changes, please see that blog
> post.
>
> 1. The goal of the PVP needs to be clarified. Its purpose is not to ensure
> reproducible builds of non-published software, but rather to provide for
> more reliable builds of libraries on Hackage. Reproducible builds should be
> handled exclusively through version freezing, the only known technique to
> actually give the necessary guarantees.
>
> 2. Upper bounds should not be included on non-upgradeable packages, such
> as base and template-haskell (are there others?). Alternatively, we should
> establish some accepted upper bound on these packages, e.g. many people
> place base < 5 on their code.
>
> 3. We should be distinguishing between mostly-stable packages and unstable
> packages. For a package like text, if you simply import Data.Text (Text,
> pack, reverse), or some other sane subset, there's no need for upper
> bounds. (Note that this doesn't provide a hard-and-fast rule like the
> current PVP, but is rather a matter of discretion. Communication between
> library authors and users (via documentation or other means) would be vital
> to making this work well.)
>
> 4. For a package version A.B.C, a bump in A or B indicates some level of
> breaking change. As an opt-in approach, package authors are free to
> associated meaning to A and B beyond what the PVP requires. Libraries which
> use these packages are free to rely on the guarantees provided by package
> authors when placing upper bounds. (Note that this is very related to point
> (3).)
>
> Discussion period: 3 weeks.
>
> [1] http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2014/04/proposal-changes-pvp
>
> _______________________________________________
> Libraries mailing list
> Libraries at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/attachments/20140409/408a6220/attachment.html>