mukai:
Why is all this GHC-only? If the earlier stuff really does need to be GHC-only, shouldn't this be too?
I agree with you. There are no needs to be GHC-only.
However, my code imports GHC.List and GHC.Word (not Data.List and Data.Word because they import Data.Char). These requirements are implementation dependent. I have little knowledge about other implementation; I do not know the appropriate module names for NHC or Hugs or other implementations. I have no testing environments for them.
If you do want to work on the base library, its _essential_ in my opinion to install Hugs, and test the code under it as well. This is quite easy if you develop the code separately in a cabalised library, since you can switch between Hugs and GHC with ./Setup.hs configure --hugs. Really really useful feature. I also recommend using QuickCheck to define properties, since then those properties can be tested under Hugs and GHC too. In fact, I'd go so far as to propose that no pure code be allowed into base without accompanying QuickCheck properties.... Any takers? Should we formalise a policy for adding contributions to the core libraries? Along the lines of, must use: * haddockised * comes with QuickChecks * full type annotations * cabalised * ... -- Don