Whither split base?

[Andrew Martin]

Here's my stab at a more aggressive split:

* base: everything not removed by the libraries below
* concurrency: all Control.Concurrent.* modules (depends on base)
* foreign: all Foreign.* modules (depends on base)
* event-manager: all GHC.IO.* modules, System.Timeout (depends on base,
foreign, concurrency)

There would be some additional trickery. The stuff in Control.Concurrent
that deals with event registration would need to be moved somewhere else.
But I think this would more-or-less work.

On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:54 AM Andrew Martin <andrew.thaddeus at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>


-- 
-Andrew Thaddeus Martin
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