On Thu, Dec 06, 2012 at 11:24:41PM -0800, Mark Lentczner wrote:
In my Haskell Implementors 2012 talk Haskell Platform: Field Report and Future Goals, I called for an expansion of the content of the platform to bring it up to par with what other programming language platforms provide.
Please see my blog post today: http://mtnviewmark.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/growing/)
Where I outline what is missing, and call for a ramp up in our efforts to grow the platform.
Hi Mark, I agree in general with the goals of growing the haskell platform; I more than once expressed the same interests. However I really don't see how it can happens at the moment. The bar is too high in general. While i can understand the reason (and agree) for most of the requirements on the list of acceptance, in general this is working against the platform. I would prefer the platform to offer many more good packages that maybe doesn't meet all the high quality requirements, but provide a necessary feature for users, and see them improve over time through the platform. At the moment, I think we expect perfect packages that will enter a freezing state after being accepted. In my mind, having multiple levels of platform could be a good idea. the current platform would be platform-base, and you could have something like platform-unstable, platform-experimental, that would mark the intent of being in the platform: - users can start rely on the package with the clear expectation of change in next versions. - users/devs can proactively improve packages that are missing stuff I think there's clearly a middle ground between the graveyard-like property of the platform and pure cabal/hackage usage. I believe this is being worked on, from the other end with Michael's stackage, but more effort to meet in the middle would be a good idea. -- Vincent