Listen to Don, he is a wise man! Manuel Don Stewart:
I agree with this.
As Audrey says, you have to lower the barrier to entry. That means:
* one build system * one vcs
to build ghc (and anything it requires, such as the core libraries).
This is a chance to make a big step towards accessibility, let's make that step.
I just want to add to this. We're offering an unusual product: a lazy, purely functional language. This already separates us from the mainstream. So how to we ensure we minimise the stress of adopting something so unfamiliar?
By ensuring that in all other respects the environment they have to learn is familiar and simple.
I think we risk isolating oursevles yet further -- and creating new barriers to adoption, beyond those we can't avoid -- by adding more complicated dependencies (two revision control systems, one of which, darcs, is now firmly out of the maintstream).
Instead, if we just use ubiquitous, common tools -- like git -- for everything, we minimise the pain for people, and sit firmly in the mainstream of open source.
If anything has been learnt by Spencer and I while working on xmonad, is: dependencies, dependencies, dependencies
reduce these, and you gain eyeballs, and ultimately developers. Increase these, and you end up isolated and marginalised.
So let's capitalise on this switch to git, and take the opportunity to remove one big dependency from the system.
-- Don