[xmonad] darcs patch: XMonad.Core: rw recompilation

[Gwern Branwen]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Ivan Miljenovic
<ivan.miljenovic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9 May 2010 06:03, Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> wrote:
>> What's the motivation?
>
> Still haven't seen anyone answer this question (and I don't see the
> point in this either; the only advantage is it might make it easier
> when doing GHC upgrades or something).

It removes one less variable in possible recompilation errors (I think
this was already mentioned as part of making upgrades less liable to
issues);
it means tab-completion is not stymied by 2 extraneous files with the
same prefix as 'xmonad.hs' and makes it easier to see what is what in
~/.xmonad (should users really need to know about .hi and .o files?);
and it's a small change, which I think would be justified by either benefit.

(If customization is the raison d'etre of xmonad, anything which
removes an irritant is a benefit.)

The objection that it won't catch stuff in .xmonad/lib is not
significant, I don't think. Do many users use that? And if the
compilation cleanup is incomplete, does it hurt anything? It would be
nice to eliminate *all* the intermediates, but it seems like another
'perfect is the enemy of the good' issue.

-- 
gwern