Hi, (This mail is related to http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.libraries/3788 ) What I'm proposing is to make SocketOption a proper ADT and change get- and setSocketOption to functions that take type constructors instead of tags as arguments, i.e. getSocketOption :: Socket -> (a -> SocketOption) -> IO a setSocketOption :: Socket -> (a -> SocketOption) -> a -> IO () To make that work, the two functions are implemented in a type class. I'll attach a patch bundle (in darcs send -o format) of two patches: 1) implement the infrastructure for this change. it is mostly backward compatible: As long as code doesn't explicitely mention the SocketOption type, it should work without modifications. 2) give the options more sensible types. -- this breaks existing code. For example, setSocketOption sock ReuseAddr 1 becomes setSocketOption sock ReuseAddr True (the patch includes the necessary fixes for the network package) What's missing is a solution for the problem that prompted this change, namely setting struct time_val values. To do that, I'd need some Storable type that maps to struct time_val. I think Network.* is not the proper place to implement that. Where should it go? - Foreign.C.Types - not generally useful enough, I think. - System.Time - not portable enough? - System.Posix.* - seems to be the right place to me. related stuff: http://cryp.to/hsdns/System/Posix/GetTimeOfDay.hsc -- quite close to what I'd like to have; conversions to, say, System.Time.ClockTime would be useful though. http://www.haskell.org/~simonmar/time/NewTime.hsc -- looks like a new System.Time to me; the CTimeVal handling seems to be identical to System.Time though Comments, questions and suggestions are welcome. Bertram P.S. thanks to heatsink on #haskell for the suggestion of passing constructors to the functions. That simplified the code a lot at a small loss of safety, and made the interface more similar to the old one.