On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 16:52 +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
Proposal ticket here:
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3270
Deadline for discussion: June 15 (2 weeks)
Text of the proposal:
The `packedstring` library has been superseded by the `bytestring` and `text` libraries, yet we are still shipping it with GHC for only one reason: it is used in the representations of three types in `template-haskell`.
The proposal is that we
* make the types `ModName`, `PkgName`, and `OccName` from `Language.Haskell.TH.Syntax` into abstract newtypes (an API change)
* change their representation from `PackedString` to `String`
* drop the `packedstring` library from the bootlibs that GHC ships with
Seems sensible. Shouldn't break many users since the three type already have functions to convert to and from String, which most users are probably using. Switching to a newtype also means we don't have to break it again if we decide to switch to Text or something in future. Duncan