Ian Lynagh
On Mon, Jun 07, 2010 at 11:50:44AM -0700, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:
A complete rewrite with a new maintainer: fgl-awesome
In 10 years time, we don't want to have fgl fgl-awesome fgl-great fgl-joe which all do the same thing, and have an unclear relationship to each other.
Definitely (though hopefully we wouldn't pick names like "fgl-awesome" anyway...).
I think the important question is: Once the new FGL is finished, will there be a good reason (other than backwards compatibility) for people to use the current FGL?
If yes, then different names should be used. Otherwise, no matter how different the API is, keeping the same name is the right thing to do.
And this is why we're going to request the community's input on our API design: to try and avoid the situation where there's a specific reason to keep using the old one. As it stands, the only real advantage that I can think of is that the new version uses extensions, the old version doesn't (and hence is more compatible).
So if there is consensus that the new design is a better fgl, I think it ought to keep the name.
Which is what we're trying to build (the consensus, that is). Don has started a wiki page with the arguments here, and I've already added my 2c: http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Libraries/WhenToRewriteOrRename -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com