Splitting Network.URI from the network package

[Graham Klyne]

On 13/08/2014 13:02, Michael Snoyman wrote:
>> My apologies. Let me clarify. If the user doesn't already have a version
>> >of network installed (e.g. via the HP), then building network is required
>> >to build network-uri. This probably isn't a problem on Windows, if we
>> >assume users already have an appropriate version of network through the HP.
>> >It might be an inconvenience (e.g. longer build times) for users who don't
>> >use the HP but still want to build network-uri (e.g for the maintainer of
>> >network-uri:)  ).
>> >
>> >
> Thanks for the clarifications Duncan and Johan. Yes, we should add a con to
> the option 2 that usage of network-uri will require network to be
> available. I'd consider this a relatively low-impact con, since I highly
> doubt there are many people out there who will want to use Network.URI but
> not also want to use network- at least transitively.

Hmmm... there are reasonable uses of URIs (e.g. in on-disk XML and RDF 
processing) that do not necessarily require use of networking.  These may be a 
minority, but I think they're not so rare.

Also, my experience in other languages is that one may work with a web 
application framework (via something like WSGI), there can lots of URI handling 
code without any direct use of networking.  Also, I do a lot of testing of URI 
handling code separately from any networking.

I think removing the URI handling dependency on networking would be a Good Thing.

#g

(developer of a past version of network-uri.)