Re: [Haskell-cafe] base version numbers

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 06:09:51PM +1000, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

On 16 June 2016 at 17:58, Tom Ellis wrote:

...

Since each version of GHC depends precisely on one version of base, would it not be more clear to name them after their version of GHC, rather than 4.x.y.z?

Except that:

* That would break the Package Versioning Policy and thus make it more difficult to determine to what extent there are any potentially breaking changes

Why's that? When GHC x.y.z depends on base a.b.c.d, a and b only depend on x and y, and vice versa. Seems like this condition implies that the PVP would be upheld.

* Makes it more difficult for an alternate Haskell implementation to use the Prelude

I don't understand that. Surely an alternate Haskell implementation cannot depend on base? It's far too GHC specific.

* Makes it more difficult for a potential future where versions of base are less tightly coupled to GHC and can thus be installed separately (rather than needing a new version of GHC to get a new feature from base)

Is that really realistic? Tom