Andres Loeh proposed simplifying the hooks interface now that they've grown to include not only pre-and-post hooks, but also er, "during" hooks too. That is, all of the actions are hooks now (preConf, confHooks, postConf). http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/trac/trac.cgi/ticket/23 So we could now get rid of the pre and post hooks, as long as the user could call to the default hooks thusly: myHooks = defaultUserHooks { confHook = myConf } myConf pd cf = do myPreConf lbi <- confHook defaultUserHooks myPostConf pd cf lbi (for suitable myPreConf and myPostConf functions) This would greatly simplify the Distribution.Simple.UserHooks structure bringing it from 34 fields to 14 fields, or so. Downsides: Making pre and post hooks would now be slightly harder, and it would break existing hooks-using code. I like it. What are your feelings? peace, isaac