Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj@microsoft.com>:

So that was the plan.  I still think it’s a good plan.  But it clearly is not working well, and I’m hazy about why.  Possible reasons:

·         Possible diagnosis 1.   Installing HP somehow screws up the world for power users, or for a beginner who grows into a power user.  Surely we can fix this!  Installing HP should not get in the way.  I suppose that, even if installing HP doesn’t get in the way, it might be a waste of internet bandwidth and disk space for some power users.  But that is a smaller problem.

·         Possible diagnosis 2.  We have not shared the plan as a community; that is, we have focused lots of attention on GHC releases, and little attention on HP releases.  It should be the other way around. 


I’d say, both. 

Re 1, a big part of the problem is the whole cabal, package dependency and versioning morass. 

Re 2, I think, there are multiple factors. The delays in putting out the HP (as previously mentioned). Power users reading GHC Status reports and wanting to get the goodies as quickly as possible. The HP just being quite a bit of hard work people like to avoid.

Manuel