On Mon, May 02, 2005 at 08:16:12AM +0200, Shae Matijs Erisson wrote:
Dear Haskellers, Even though it's a plug, I'd like to seperately announce my article for this issue, because it grew out of discussion on this list. I'd posted some thoughts on the versioning of module interfaces a few months back, in reply to a post by Alexander Jacobson. Subsequent discussion and re-thinking have lead to the idea that, basically by appending version numbers to module names, the compatibility problem can be solved without any language extensions, in perfect synergy with Cabal and Hackage, and with very little effort on part of the programmer. It's not a ground-breaking discovery. It's a trivial idea, really; but strangely, it seems that nobody does it. So I tried to think the scenario through, to find problems and clarify my idea. The result is the article Eternal Compatibility in Theory http://www.haskell.org/tmrwiki/EternalCompatibilityInTheory In short, I didn't find any problems and adopted the scheme for one of my own modules. I think it would be great if we could solve the problem of "creeping incompatibility", whether by my idea or otherwise. So if you're interested, please have a look at the article and let me know of your experience should you try it out! Best regards, Sven Moritz Hallberg PS: Last but not least, everyone should of course check out the other great articles, too!