On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 9:30 AM, Christian Maeder
if you remove the String instance I would need to encode my strings manually (and maybe worse than it is done now).
This isn't actually that hard, and particularly it would be easy to do a better job than the current one if you used a real encoding package like text or utf8-string.
Which instance does the package cabal-install use?
Looks like it uses both String and ByteString in various pieces of the code. But it would probably be a sensible idea to switch to ByteString anyway.
Which alternative (better maintained) packages could I use if I have to change my code anyway?
The header of Network.HTTP contains a "Portability" saying "non-portable (not tested)", but the package contains a test-suite. Are tests (or their lack) a portability issue?
There is no standardised meaning of the Portability field, as far as I know, so it's probably best to ignore this. Yours, Ben