wither the Platform

[Herbert Valerio Riedel]

On 2015-03-21 at 18:54:26 +0100, Mark Lentczner wrote:

[...]

> The Platform arose in an era before sandboxes and before curated library
> sets like Stackage and LTS. Last time we set direction was several years
> ago. These new features and development have clearly changed the landscape
> for use to reconsider what to do.

[...]

> Thoughts?

My biggest complaint about the current HP is that it pollutes the global
package database with additional packages which leak into `cabal
sandbox`es. This causes `cabal sandbox` to provide quite different
sandbox environments for HP environments compared to a non-HP
environment without those additional packages pre-installed.

Currently GHC/Cabal knows about a global package db and a user package
db (the user pkg db is is what gets replaced/shadowed by cabal
sandboxes). Maybe we need a 3rd package db sitting between the global
and the user package db that interacts better with cabal sandboxes?

Cheers,
  hvr