qualified imports, PVP and so on (Was: add new Data.Bits.Bits(bitZero) method)

Daniel Trstenjak daniel.trstenjak at gmail.com
Tue Feb 25 15:38:42 UTC 2014


Hi Brandon,

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:12:29AM -0500, Brandon Allbery wrote:
> Is it better to save a developer some work, or is it better to force that work
> onto end users?

What is an end user? Someone installing a package containing an executable?
Then the package is an end point in the dependency graph and the PVP can
work pretty well for this case.

But if the package contains a library, then the end user is also the
developer, so you can only choose which kind of pain you prefer.

> Because we keep constantly seeing examples where saving the developer some
> upper bounds PVP work forces users to deal with unexpected errors, but since
> Haskell developers don't see that user pain it is considered irrelevant/
> nonexistent and certainly not any justification for saving developers some
> work.

I think that in most cases it doesn't really make much difference for the
end user, if they're seeing a package version mismatch or if they're
seeing a compile error.

Sure, the package version mismatch is more telling, but in most cases he
will be equally lost and has to ask for help.


Greetings,
Daniel


More information about the Libraries mailing list