Christian Maeder wrote:
3. if ghci is going to use editline... then readline would not need to be a core package und users might need to install package readline explicitly.
OK, I get it. Even if we leave readline as it is, so that the package system will theoretically not force the person to take action, in practice action will be needed the next time the person upgrades GHC. So you would like to minimize overall work of changing packages over all users. Even so, I think it is more important to minimize confusion over users who are not aware of this whole discussion, and may have minimal knowledge of the package system. They don't want to have to figure things out - they just want it to keep working as before. The need to re-install some package due to the shrinking GHC library core is an annoyance all GHC users are aware of by now. You figure out what has disappeared, and you install it. Changing the semantics of the readline package would add to the confusion, I believe. Also, I think in general we should do what makes the most sense within the package system itself. GHC library core shrinkage is an external issue, though I agree that in practice it will affect everyone. So I am still in favor of keeping readline as it is. Thanks, Yitz