Whither split base?

[Andrew Martin]

For additional clarity, I should mention that I am looking for low-hanging
fruit here. The higher and tastier fruit would of course be splitting out
the event manager and all the file handle logic with it. But that would be
difficult, both in terms of the actual work required and in terms of
achieving a consensus.

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:47 AM Andrew Martin <andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com>
wrote:

> We could also move out all the modules underneath Control.Concurrent (but
> not Control.Concurrent itself) except for the MVar module. We would have to
> leave that one because there is a bunch of other stuff in base that uses
> MVar. These modules have demonstrated less stability than
> System.Console.GetOpt and Text.Printf, and there are competing
> implementations in other libraries.
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:42 AM Andrew Martin <andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The benefit is certainly small, and it probably would discourage using
>> the API. I don't think that the migration path would be tricky. The new
>> package would just reexport Text.Printf when built with base < 4.13, and it
>> would define it when built with base >= 4.13. All that is required is a
>> build-depends line. However, people really shouldn't be using this API in
>> library code. Other modules in base provide more efficient and more
>> type-safe ways handle most of the situations I've seen this used for.
>>
>> I've never used System.Console.GetOpt (I'm typically use
>> optparse-applicative for option parsing), but yes, I think that would also
>> be a good candidate. Since there are multiple competing approach for
>> argument parsing in the haskell ecosystem, my preference would be to avoid
>> blessing any of them with inclusion in base.
>>
>> I don't feel particularly strongly about either of these, but their
>> position in base feels odd. They both feel like the result of applying a
>> "batteries included" mindset to a standard library that has by and large
>> refrained from including batteries.
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:17 AM Herbert Valerio Riedel <
>> hvriedel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 2018-10-30 at 08:04:59 -0400, Andrew Martin wrote:
>>> > Here's an idea for this I had last night. It's narrowly scoped, but I
>>> think
>>> > it moves us a tiny bit in the right direction. We could move
>>> Text.Printf
>>> > out of base and into its own library. This doesn't really belong in
>>> base.
>>> > The interface it provides it somewhat opinionated, and it's not even
>>> > type-safe. The new library could be named `printf` and could live
>>> under the
>>> > haskell github organization. Any thoughts for or against?
>>>
>>> Ok, but what does this effectively achieve?
>>>
>>> Text.Printf is an API that has been extremely stable and doesn't
>>> significant evolve anymore; I don't think it has contributed to major
>>> ver bumps in recent times, nor is it likely to. So I don't see much of a
>>> compelling benefit in doing so. The effect I'd expect if we do this is
>>> that `Text.Printf` will be reached for less (which some might argue to
>>> be a desirable effect -- but you're effectively pushing this API to a
>>> path of slow legacy death due to reduced discoverability, IMO), as the
>>> convenience of using it is reduced by requiring adding and maintaining
>>> an additional `build-depends` line to your package descriptions, as well
>>> as having to deal with the subtly tricky business of handling the
>>> migration path pre/post-split (c.f. the `network-bsd` split currently
>>> being in progress).
>>>
>>> Btw, a related extremely stable API in base I could think of which
>>> people might argue doesn't belong into `base` either is maybe
>>> `System.Console.GetOpt`; would you argue to split that off as well?
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>>
>>
>> --
>> -Andrew Thaddeus Martin
>>
>
>
> --
> -Andrew Thaddeus Martin
>


-- 
-Andrew Thaddeus Martin
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