Whither split base?

[Edward Kmett]

There are lots of parts of base that evolve at radically different speeds.

It'd be nice if these could be versioned separately. Then code that only
depends on stable portions of base could properly still follow the PVP in
their bounds rather than the (base <5) bounds that everybody uses and still
not break with _every_ GHC release, which currently slavishly updates the
major version number every release.

It'd also be nice if base was somehow splintered into smaller components.
This could enable things like GHCJS/Eta support in a more principled way.
Backpack could be instrumental to accomplishing this. e.g. consider that
each of those wants Text implemented a different way, and the same can be
extrapolated over much of base's FFI support.

However, the main stumbling block is that base is huge, and is riddled with
cyclic dependencies, splitting it up into components without cycles between
them that somehow respect all of the current power of base is no small task.

When previous attempts were made backpack wasn't in a usable state yet. It
may well be more tractable today.

-Edward

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 6:46 PM Daniel Cartwright <chessai1996 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Could someone articulate on this "split base"? What does this mean
> exactly? Having one or more versions of officially supported 'base'-like
> libraries?
>
> On Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 6:17 PM Edward Kmett <ekmett at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> We had two different people join the CLC with the express wish of working
>> on it. Both of them seemed to recoil at the scale of the problem after
>> going deeper, and progress ground to a halt.
>>
>> We _do_ have a few open slots on the committee though. I'm putting out an
>> open call for folks to join the committee today. Maybe someone interested
>> in diving into the problem might apply. =)
>>
>> -Edward
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 12:06 AM Carter Schonwald <
>> carter.schonwald at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I just remembered that it was one of the ongoing things the CLC was
>>> involved with, for a while.  Has there been recent action there ?
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