The Haskell Language committee has had a quiet year. Following the
announcement of Haskell 2010 in Nov 2009 [1], and the publication of
the 2010 Report in July 2010 [2], we found a distinct lack of complete
new proposals to decide upon. As a result, the committee has made the
following decisions:
(a) we wish to accept the NoDatatypeContexts proposal
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki/NoDatatypeContexts
(b) this delta will be applied to the 2010 Report to form a new
baseline;
(c) we will _not_ issue a new language standard called 2011;
(d) we intend to issue a new language standard in 2012;
(e) the committee will continue for another year without new
nominations.
However, let me make it clear that the apparent lull in committee
activity does not mean there are no active proposals being made. On
the contrary, proposals for language features (and removals) are made
by the community at large (that's you) - the committee's main role is
not to make proposals, but to decide which to accept. And there have
in fact been a large number of proposals, but very few have made it
all the way to the stage of producing a "language report delta" that
could be accepted (or modified) by the committee.
So, I wish to declare "open season" on proposals for the 2012
standard. If there is a language feature you care about, please do
take an hour or two to review the details on our wiki [3], search for
older discussions on the mailing lists, and draft the Report changes
you think would be necessary. I'm looking forward to a more active
and exciting collection of potential language changes for 2012, but it
will only happen if you get involved.
Regards,
Malcolm (Haskell 2011 committee chair)
[1] http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2009-November/021750.html
[2] http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2010-July/022189.html
[3] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/
