PROPOSAL: re-export 'Typeable' type-class from Prelude

[Anthony Cowley]

I'm -1 on this as I'm not yet convinced that reaching for Typeable should be such a quick decision that it deserves to always be in scope.

Anthony

> On Sep 11, 2014, at 6:20 AM, Herbert Valerio Riedel <hvr at gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> TL;DR
> =====
> 
> Re-export 'Data.Typeable.Typeable' from 'Prelude'
> 
> Motivation
> ==========
> 
> Since GHC 7.8 the ubiquitous 'Typeable' instances can only be
> auto-derived via `... deriving Typeable`, moreover there's a new
> extension `-XAutoDeriveTypeable` which implicitly auto-derives
> 'Typeable' for all defined types in modules for which that extension is
> enabled.
> 
> However, even if you enable `-XAutoDeriveTypeable` you still need to
> explicitly bring the 'Typeable' class into scope, with e.g.
> 
>    import Data.Typeable (Typeable)
> 
> otherwise GHC complains with
> 
>    Not in scope: type constructor or class ‘Typeable’
> 
> Since at this point it's become current practice to have 'Typeable'
> instances for most types, it would be beneficial to save an 'import
> Data.Typeable (Typeable)' line for the sole purpose of deriving such
> instances.
> 
> By having 'Prelude' re-export 'Typeable' from GHC 7.10 on (should this
> proposal be implemented) it would suffice to have a
> 
>  default-extensions: -XAutoDeriveTypeable`
> 
> in the Cabal file and have 'Typeable' instance auto-derived for all
> types defined in a package w/o any source changes (unless there's a
> name-clash with 'Typeable')
> 
> Discussion period
> =================
> 
> The usual 2 weeks
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