While I'm notionally in favor of decoupling API-breaking changes from non-API breaking changes, there are two major difficulties: GHC.Prim and Template Haskell. Should a non-API-breaking change mean that GHC.Prim is immutable?  If so, this greatly restricts GHC's development.  If not, it means that a large chunk of hackage will become unbuildable due to deps on vector and primitive.  With Template Haskell the situation is largely similar, although the deps are different.

What I would like to see are more patch-level bugfix releases.  I suspect the reason we don't have more is that making a release is a lot of work.  So, Ian, what needs to happen to make more frequent patch releases feasible?



On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 7:42 AM, Carter Schonwald <carter.schonwald@gmail.com> wrote:

Well said. Having a more aggressive release cycle is another interesting perspective.

On Feb 10, 2013 6:21 PM, "Gabriel Dos Reis" <gdr@integrable-solutions.net> wrote:
On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 3:16 PM, Ian Lynagh <ian@well-typed.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 09:02:18PM +0000, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
>>
>> You may ask what use is a GHC release that doesn't cause a wave of updates?  And hence that doesn't work with at least some libraries.  Well, it's a very useful forcing function to get new features actually out and tested.
>
> But the way you test new features is to write programs that use them,
> and programs depend on libraries.
>
>
> Thanks
> Ian

Releasing GHC early and often (possibly with API breakage) isn't
really the problem.  The real problem is how to coordinate with
library authors (e.g. Haskell Platform), etc.

I suspect GHC should continue to offer a platform for research
and experiments. That is much harder if you curtail the ability to
release GHC early and often.

-- Gaby

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