On 12/20/11 1:24 PM, Erik Hesselink wrote:
I'd ask you to follow the PVP here. Problems with duplicate instances are often tricky to resolve, and not something you want to encounter when you're developing (not upgrading dependencies). I've often added orphan instances for types from other packages. Yes, I should (and often do) send these upstream, but I still add them locally. I have to have the instance now, to continue my work, and there's no telling when a new version of the original package will be released. The other option is forking the package, which means I also don't get bugfix updates anymore.
So in short: I find breakage due to conflicting instances much more annoying than a major version bump.
Agreed with this. And with Ganesh Sittampalam: the solution to the problem of major version changes is automated testing/reporting, not allowing potentially breaking changes in minor versions. Yes orphans are bad, but they can be required as an interim measure (or, with CPP, for backwards compatibility). -- Live well, ~wren