Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
In response to Brian and Ian's helpful comments, I've added a bunch more stuff to our proposal about packages. If I have missed anything, let me know.
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GhcPackages
If you or anyone else thinks the choices made there are poor ones, continue to say so. It's a helpful process.
I think the proposed system is too complicated. I'd have thought there were some simple aims: 1) Backwards compatibility so existing code doesn't break 2) Allow people to use per-package module namespaces in new code 3) Allow package names to be URLs (Marc Weber's idea http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/haskell-cafe/2006-June/016378.html ) And the following possible solutions: 1) The current "import" syntax would refer to shared namespace imports (exactly as at present) 2) A new keyword, "use", would indicate use of per-package namespaces 3) Putting the package name in quotes allows more complex package names including URLs and packages located in a specific folder etc in future, and also makes it clear that the package name is an OS filename (albeit conforming to a special form) not a Haskell id, and also allows the "use" syntax to be very concise since a quoted name cannot be confused with a modid. So instead of just taking this simple solution, the wiki proposal is instead destroying the beauty of the per-package namespace idea by incorporating into it the existing shared namespaces with their attendant problems, instead of just letting the existing messy system die a natural death through the syntactic isolation I proposed. In three years' time, how easy will it be to explain Haskell's module system to a new programmer? Regards, Brian. -- Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose. Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past, congealed in the present in unthought forms, strive mightily unseen to destroy us. http://www.metamilk.com