Hello Neil, Thursday, November 23, 2006, 4:17:19 AM, you wrote:
* base libs are libs, which is guaranteed to be shipped with *every* haskell distribution.
That sounds fine, and when this work has been done, bytestring and filepath both deserve to live in this second ring. Only modules which are deeply tied to the compiler should live in that core ring.
However, for the moment, base (as we know it) is the first two layers of your proposal. As such, both bytestring and filepath belong in the base library.
so, the only reason why you want to include FilePath in Base is to make it available for any haskeller? i consider this as one more argument for GHC HQ to accept my proposal ;)
There is also the question of Cabal, your second layer is not guaranteed to be installed on all systems,
reread first line of message, please :)
so Cabal setup programs cannot use them. This means that all Cabal setup programs will have to keep randomly string hacking at FilePath's.
This definitely sounds like the way to go for the future - it will make library porting to other compilers much easier. It is important to realise that this is the future, not the present, so to reject things from the base library on the basis they need moving to a place that doesn't currently exist is probably the wrong solution.
I know Bulat is investigating this, are the GHC team/Igloo aiming to split up base with any particular target timeframe?
actually i investigate(d) another problem - splitting ghc.* into the simple ghc-specific and complex compiler-independent parts, i.e. reorganizing the future-coming Core library in a way that facilitate adding support of new compilers. this really needs rather complex rewriting of existing code what i proposed in this letter is an *independent* task. even two tasks - first, make a decision that filepath and fps modules may become a part of base libs if peoples want to have them with any ghc installation and this don't need much time ;) second - split base into GHC.* and remaining parts and see how this construction will fly :) sorry, i can't try it myself without recompiling GHC -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com