On 23 June 2005 10:14, Frederik Eaton wrote:
It looks like there's been a bit of recent discussion regarding module and package namespaces. There is a certain possible design feature that I don't think has been mentioned yet, that I think would be very helpful, so I thought I should at least bring it up.
This idea has been raised before, but it was a while back, and we called it "grafting". Here's the start of the thread, which went on for quite some time: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2003-August/001310.html I suspect that various opinions raised in that thread have now changed (mine included). I'm not sure I can succinctly describe why the idea wasn't adopted - I think it is a combination of the complexity it introduces in the implementations, the feeling that the power to weight ratio is a little too low, and the fact that at the time there were many other issues to resolve in the packaging system without considering grafting. As I said, opinions may have changed, and it might be worthwhile to discuss this again. Cheers, Simon