The advantage this offers is that Free and Cofree would be able to enjoy a greater number of typeclass instances provided libraries across the ecosystem. As it stands, adding the somewhat heavy `free` dependency is not a good choice for libraries like `aeson`, `mustache`, and `hashable`. In the case of Fix, the ecosystem currently lacks a canonical library that provides it (recursion-schemes and data-fix both offer the same definition though, and various tutorials all define it the same way). It could benefit from the new instances as well.
>>>>> "AM" == Andrew Martin <andrew.thaddeus@gmail.com> writes:
AM> I would gladly help with any of the work that needs to be done to make
AM> this happen. I believe that Fix and Free (and Cofree to a lesser extent)
AM> have proved themselves over years of use in the ecosystem. I would
AM> appreciate any feedback or thoughts that others have on this topic.
What advantage is there to having them in base, rather than living in the
'free' package as they do now?
--
John Wiegley GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com 60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2