Proposal: Bring the Contravariant class to base

[Edward Kmett]

I'd be open to merging the existing Data.Functor.Contravariant module into
base (inverting dependencies as needed), while leaving the remainder of the
contravariant package intact. This module contains the class and a couple
of example contravariant functors, much in the same vein as Data.Monoid.
This would leave the more exotic machinery for 'contravariant applicatives'
and all the generic programming bits in the package.

+1

This would be similar to the migration of Data.Proxy from tagged into base,
which left behind Data.Tagged or the migration of Data.Semigroup from
semigroups, which left behind the generics module.

Almost all of the dependencies that would have inversions are packages I
maintain personally. The only package that would require coordination with
another maintainer would be inverting the instances for data types supplied
by transformers.

If there was a sufficient call for it, I'd be open to moving the rest into
base, but I don't anticipate a great deal of demand and this could always
happen at a later date or as part of another proposal, should this change.

-Edward

On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 11:44 PM, Daniel Díaz Casanueva <
dhelta.diaz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear haskellers,
>
> I admit I might not have the strongest arguments here, but I thought that
> I would share my opinion anyway, and maybe get other people's perspectives.
> I would like to propose bringing the Contravariant class [1] to base.
>
> I know, base keeps growing, and maybe there is no need for it to grow
> further without a strong argument, but I do feel like Contravariant is a
> simple, very basic class, that would receive better and greater use if
> included in base. Contravariant is very similar to Functor (some people
> call it CoFunctor), but in `contramap` (Contravariant's `fmap`) the "arrow"
> of the applied function goes in the opposite direction. I think that
> `contramap` can be useful for many types, just like `fmap` is for many
> others, but we don't use it because it's not yet so popular, or maybe
> because it requires the contravariant package to be included as dependency
> (although personally I don't think that is a real problem). The
> contravariant package itself provides a plentiful of instances, many of
> them for types in base.
>
> In a real world scenario I had, it was very useful to add a Contravariant
> instance to `Data.Aeson.ToJSONKeyFunction`, that perhaps is not included
> in aeson because either it was not desired to add the contravariant package
> as dependency, or simply because Contravariant is not so well-known. Note
> that, however, `FromJSONKeyFunction` _is_ instance of Functor. Even though
> both instances are equally natural and useful in this context, only one of
> them was implemented. This probably would not have happened if
> Contravariant was in base.
>
> So, in my opinion, for the sake of completeness, I think we should add
> Contravariant to base, just as we have Functor. Note that my proposal does
> not necessarily include the rest of types and functions defined in the
> contravariant package.
>
> Best regards,
> Daniel Casanueva
>
> # References
>
> [1] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/contravariant-1.4/
> docs/Data-Functor-Contravariant.html#t:Contravariant
>
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