On 2013-07-15 09:56, Joachim Breitner wrote: [--snip--]
The suggestion ==============
So I’d like to suggest that we turn the base package into a pure API package. This means that there will be no code in the package at all, only re-exports from other packages. The current code can then go into a base-ghc-impl package (or even many packages).
A question related to this: Is it possible for such an "API package" to actually explicitly specify type signatures of its re-exports, perhaps using abstract types where no particular implementation would be dictated? It seems to me that this would be highly valuable to provide a) documentation which could be shared across all implementations, b) a contract such that a given implementation can tell whether it really is conforming to expected type signatures, and c) a contract such that *users* of base can be certain that they're not unwittingly relying on implementation details in a given implementation of base. Without such checks I fear that things may end up in a bit of a mess type-wise if there *were* actually to be multiple implementations at some point. (Though it would certainly improve on the curren situtation). Overall, the proposal sounds like a great idea to start to get a handle on the mess that is base ;). Regards,