On 4 Feb 2011, at 09:41, John Smith wrote:
There has been a fair amount of discussion, both on this list and libraries, regarding the Monad class hierarchy. The many on the libraries list expressed support for the patch at http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/4834 , conditional on it being part of the next Haskell report. However, Haskell' prefers patches to have been implemented before proposing here.
What is the best way out of this deadlock?
I suggested, and several people +1'd, that if we are making disruptive changes to the standard libraries defined in the Language Report (especially the Prelude), then we should aim to make a thorough job of cleaning up all the cruft and redesigning in a single strike. This means not just rearranging the Monad hierarchy, but looking at I/O types, exceptions, the default strictness of foldl, and much much more. I would expect the language committee to get involved in reviewing the decisions of the base library strike force. Then (for instance) ghc could make a major release with the refreshed libraries, and after a little experience in the field (and perhaps a few patches), the libraries would then proceed to be blessed as part of the subsequent language standard. Regards, Malcolm