Hi
It is my intention to try and get this FilePath library into the base,
please no!!! why you don't understand that including in base means death of development for any library! are you really want that anyone who need new version of your lib should recompile GHC himself?!
I consider the FilePath library to be complete, and somewhat frozen already. I doubt that people need many other features - so I don't think thats the end of the world. I have split my FilePath library into System.FilePath (which I want included in base) and System.FilePath.Version_0_10 (which people should currently import) - that way there are no conflicts, and in a few years time everyone can use System.FilePath instead of the version specific one, and everyone will be happy. I don't propose to break any current users at any point.
libs should be included in "base libs" set and i proposed a few months ago to radically extend it by including fundamental libs, including FilePath. but base library, which contains ghc-version specific code and can't be upgraded using cabal, should not evolve. see our discussion in libraries maillist
I think that FilePath should be in the current base library, as its standards go. Once your work to split base up into just the compiler dependant bits is done then I think it should be moved out, but I suspect that this work won't happen until 6.10 or later, so it deserves to go in the base library now. Anyway, I think we can have a big discussion on this when the time comes - so any discussion now would just be preempting things. Thanks Neil