RE: base package -- goals

11 Mar 2013

      |  I don’t feel in the position to actually make a call here, or even to cast a vote with
|  confidence, but I’m happy to continue summarizing the discussion until a
|  consensus is found. If there is more discussion, that is.

I've updated the page http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/SplitBase a bit.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of goals

A Better for external clients (stable APRs, few version bumps)
B Better for internal implementation (eg using containers or bytestring in base)

On the Wiki page, (G1) and (G2) are to do with group (A).  And this seems best handled by defining client-facing shim packages that export just what you want.

However (G4) and later seem to be concerned with (B), and they clearly do require re-structuring the code.

It seems entirely possible to me that BOTH will be needed.  That is, the structure to achieve (B) will not be precisely what is wanted for (A).  So it seems to be me that both approaches are valid and we might want to do both.  We can do them in either order, or simultaneously.  (Mind you, doing (A) first would make (B) less disruptive for our users.)

In short, less of an either/or, more of a both/and.

Simon

RE: base package -- goals

Simon Peyton-Jones