Re: I can no longer maintain containers

6 Apr 2016


      I think we can start with Wren Romano and myself, and ideally add someone
to manage Data.Graph sometime later. The question of splitting the package
is largely independent. I'd like to see it happen eventually, but it could
easily wait several years if that's necessary to avoid problems elsewhere.

Further justification for why I want a split, ultimately

Milan is right that data structure libraries can consist of unrelated
structures, but I think containers is still a bit odd in that so many
things are *missing*. I'd expect a data structure library offering the
structures containers happens to include to also include more specialized
sequence types (e.g. queues, deques, catenable lists, catenable queues,
catenable deques), other order-based structures (e.g., priority queues,
priority search queues), and probably other things too (tries, perhaps).
The selection just seems arbitrary. Making a huge package with all these
things a low-level dependency would be awful. So logically, it would seem
sensible to divide up the pieces and let packagers bundle the ones they
want. If Cabal can't handle this well, then maybe Cabal needs to be fixed.
On Apr 6, 2016 4:40 PM, "Milan Straka"  wrote:
...
Hi all,
personally I think that splitting containers has nearly no
advantages, but may negatively affect many users, so I am against it.
The details follow.
It is true that containers consists of unrelated data structures, but
many data structure libraries do, and I do not believe that is should be
a reason to split the package. Also I feel that containers are quite
small.
From the user point of view, I doubt people would appreciate having more
fine-grained versioning of parts of containers. Also note that it is
difficult to use other version of containers than the one bundled with
GHC (hm, template-haskell used to depend on bundled containers, but at
least in 7.10 it does not anymore -- only Cabal, binary, ghc, haskeline,
hoopl and hpc does; the situation is better that it used to), so
incremental releases of containers between GHC releases have (had?)
little use.
From the maintainer point of view, I think building/testing of
containers is fine, as the library is pretty small and (at least from my
point of view) builds reasonably fast. Moreover, as containers are
_widely_ used, I believe we should make as little backward incompatible
changes as possible, so bundling releases with GHC releases is fine (and
therefore little would be gained from having three smaller packages).
Splitting the package may cause problems -- some people think so, some
think that the problems are recoverable -- but still, it is probable
that some issues will appear and these may affect a lot of users.
Cheers,
Milan
...
-----Original message-----
From: David Feuer 
Sent: 3 Apr 2016, 20:39
1. There can be multiple maintainers with independent release
schedules, independent testing and benchmarking code, etc., without
stepping on each other's toes or relying on the CLC to make decisions.
2. The containers package does not currently have a unified theme.
Instead, it has a somewhat haphazard collection of container types.
Four of them (IntSet, IntMap, Set, and Map) really do feel like a
package together, and Data.Graph is essentially an extension
of/application of Data.Tree. The rest feel quite thoroughly different
from each other. Splitting the package would yield three packages that
each "make sense" independently.
3. containers is fairly large, and takes a while to build. There might
be a way to work around that to make it more convenient to work with
individual components, but in light of points 1 and 2, I just don't
think it's worth the trouble.
...
I’m not sure if I see an advantage to severing the packages. I think
if David only wants to take responsibility for Sequence and Tree, and then
On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 8:23 PM, Gershom B  wrote:
that should be workable regardless, with perhaps the overall package just
staying under CLC ownership for now,  or perhaps a comaintainer stepping in
on the other things. More maintainers for a package tends to be better, to
a point, imho.
...
Cheers,
Gershom
On April 3, 2016 at 8:13:52 PM, David Feuer (david.feuer@gmail.com)
...
...
Oh, and if other people think severing is the way to go, I can make
...
...
cuts within the next few weeks and take the Data.Sequence chunk. I'd
...
...
to see other parts maintained by people more familiar with them.
On Apr 3, 2016 8:09 PM, "David Feuer" wrote:
...
Note: the containers package itself would become a
dependencies-only shim,
perhaps under CLC maintenance.
On Apr 3, 2016 8:07 PM, "David Feuer" wrote:
...
I consider myself competent to serve maintain Data.Sequence and
Data.Tree. I am much less familiar with the other modules in the
...
...
...
...
would particularly like to serve as co-maintainer if anyone else is
interested. Alternatively (and better, in my opinion), the package
could be
split. Data.Sequence is barely connected to the rest of the
...
...
...
...
the only other module that depends on it doesn't need to. Running
under
GHC, Data.Graph depends only on Data.Tree (in a hypothetical
ST-free
system, it also depends on Data.IntSet). So I think it makes sense
to have
three packages: one for Data.Sequence, one for Data.Tree and
Data.Graph,
and one for Data.Map, Data.Set, Data.IntMap, and Data.IntSet
(which share
most of their API and are therefore a sensible package, though
generally
independent). I see no reason not to divide these three portions
among
three maintainers.
On Apr 3, 2016 7:18 PM, "Milan Straka" wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am writing to let you know that I am no longer able to maintain
...
...
...
...
> containers package.
>
> I have enjoyed working on containers for several years, but I can
no
> longer find the time needed for the job (with two little kids
> and building a house).
>
> I am not sure what is the best future of the containers package
-- it
> could go to CLC, or it could get a new maintainer. If you look at
...
...
...
...
> commit logs and on the github issues/requests, you will find out
wrote:
the
prefer
package. I
package, and
the
the
that
...
...
...
...
> David Feuer has a thorough understanding of the package (notably
> Data.Sequence) and has been competently moderating the
issues/requests
> for some time now, so he would be the first choice. (I did not
contact
> him sooner, so it is surprise for him as well -- sorry, David :-)
>
> Could I humbly ask David/CLC members/anyone for comments?
>
> Cheers,
> Milan Straka
>

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