On Sunday 25 June 2006 05:16 am, Brian Hulley wrote:
Hi - At the moment there is a problem in that two packages P and Q could contain the same hierarchical module eg Data.Foo, and the only way for user code to ensure the "right" Data.Foo is used is to ensure that packages P and Q are searched in the right order. However suppose P and Q also contain another module with the same name, eg Data.Bar. And suppose a user module wants to use Data.Foo from P but Data.Bar from Q!!!
I'm wondering: would it not be easier to just make it that the package name is prepended to the hierarchical module name, so the modules would instead be called by the names P.Data.Foo and Q.Data.Bar?
[snip discussion of this idea] The idea of improving the module system has been discussed a number of times before. Here is a thread started by a suggestion from the simons which generated a fair bit of discussion: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2003-August/001310.html I'm not sure whatever became of this idea; discussion seemed to sort of reach a consensus, and then nothing happened. The module "grafting" mechanism always seemed kind of nice to me. I think some of the problems discussed in this thread could be by using cabal, especially to specify the graftings expected for compilation. It seems like grafting can give a plausible story for dealing with dynamicly loaded code, which is a nice bonus. -- Rob Dockins Talk softly and drive a Sherman tank. Laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank. -- TMBG