Indeed.  It’d make it easier for experienced folks to improve / experiment with base.  One hopes !

Currently even regular ghc contributors have to wrestle with avoiding needing recursive modules sometimes when hacking on base!  There’s still some of those in base but it’s less bad than in the past.  Though some changes have very non intuitive realizations / factoring to avoid introducing new recursion. 

On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 10:15 AM Vanessa McHale <vanessa.mchale@iohk.io> wrote:

I don't think split base would make it easier to introduce newcomers to making contributions to base.

The argument r.e. portability/backpack is that it would make it harder to use base with other compilers.

On 11/2/18 8:09 PM, John Ky wrote:
FWIW, I'm very much in favour of Ed's suggestion.

A monolithic base creates too much friction for things like porting or
introducing newcomers like myself to making contributions to base.

I am however interested in why they believe introducing backpack to
base should cause breaking changes.

Discussions there, I believe would be illuminating.

Cheers

John

On Sat, 3 Nov 2018 at 03:01, Tom Murphy <amindfv@gmail.com> wrote:
I'd rather see Backpack become a lot more mainstream (many more
packages using it, maybe seeing other Haskell compilers implement it?)
before using it to split base.

I'm also -1 on any change to our most foundational package that causes
breakage for any category of users, unless there's a very compelling
reason.

Tom

On 10/30/18, Edward Kmett <ekmett@gmail.com> wrote:
> Now that we have backpack which gives us 'reexported-modules:' perhaps a
> better plan for a split-base would be rather to leave base monolithic, with
> its current API, but instead eyeball having it re-export most if not all of
> itself from smaller split-base components?
>
> I'm mostly interested in foundational wins where splitting things up
> enables us to run in more places because you have to port fewer parts, and
> less about wins that we get from splintering off small but completely pure
> haskell components like the 'printf', but I can well understand how these
> concerns get conflated.
>
> Then Herbert's (valid) objection about needless breakage is addressed and
> it still provides a roadmap to a finer-grained dependency set nonetheless.
>
> -Edward
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 11:32 AM Daniel Cartwright <chessai1996@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> DOA seems kinda harsh at this point. If base just re-exports the stuff,
>> that makes sense, but wouldn't we want to move it out eventually?
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 11:29 AM Carter Schonwald <
>> carter.schonwald@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah
>>>
>>> The point ofnsplit base as an idea or goal is to make base simply
>>> reexport stuff.  Not to drop it off the base/face of the earth.
>>>
>>> This proposal is DOA.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 11:03 AM Vanessa McHale <vanessa.mchale@iohk.io>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Saying "people shouldn't be using this API in library code" seems like
>>>> a
>>>> poor reason to potentially break (working?) packages downstream.
>>>> On 10/30/18 7:42 AM, Andrew Martin wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The benefit is certainly small, and it probably would discourage using
>>>> the API. I don't think that the migration path would be tricky. The new
>>>> package would just reexport Text.Printf when built with base < 4.13, and
>>>> it
>>>> would define it when built with base >= 4.13. All that is required is a
>>>> build-depends line. However, people really shouldn't be using this API
>>>> in
>>>> library code. Other modules in base provide more efficient and more
>>>> type-safe ways handle most of the situations I've seen this used for.
>>>>
>>>> I've never used System.Console.GetOpt (I'm typically use
>>>> optparse-applicative for option parsing), but yes, I think that would
>>>> also
>>>> be a good candidate. Since there are multiple competing approach for
>>>> argument parsing in the haskell ecosystem, my preference would be to
>>>> avoid
>>>> blessing any of them with inclusion in base.
>>>>
>>>> I don't feel particularly strongly about either of these, but their
>>>> position in base feels odd. They both feel like the result of applying
>>>> a
>>>> "batteries included" mindset to a standard library that has by and
>>>> large
>>>> refrained from including batteries.
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 8:17 AM Herbert Valerio Riedel <
>>>> hvriedel@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2018-10-30 at 08:04:59 -0400, Andrew Martin wrote:
>>>>> > Here's an idea for this I had last night. It's narrowly scoped, but
>>>>> > I
>>>>> think
>>>>> > it moves us a tiny bit in the right direction. We could move
>>>>> Text.Printf
>>>>> > out of base and into its own library. This doesn't really belong in
>>>>> base.
>>>>> > The interface it provides it somewhat opinionated, and it's not even
>>>>> > type-safe. The new library could be named `printf` and could live
>>>>> under the
>>>>> > haskell github organization. Any thoughts for or against?
>>>>>
>>>>> Ok, but what does this effectively achieve?
>>>>>
>>>>> Text.Printf is an API that has been extremely stable and doesn't
>>>>> significant evolve anymore; I don't think it has contributed to major
>>>>> ver bumps in recent times, nor is it likely to. So I don't see much of
>>>>> a
>>>>> compelling benefit in doing so. The effect I'd expect if we do this is
>>>>> that `Text.Printf` will be reached for less (which some might argue to
>>>>> be a desirable effect -- but you're effectively pushing this API to a
>>>>> path of slow legacy death due to reduced discoverability, IMO), as the
>>>>> convenience of using it is reduced by requiring adding and maintaining
>>>>> an additional `build-depends` line to your package descriptions, as
>>>>> well
>>>>> as having to deal with the subtly tricky business of handling the
>>>>> migration path pre/post-split (c.f. the `network-bsd` split currently
>>>>> being in progress).
>>>>>
>>>>> Btw, a related extremely stable API in base I could think of which
>>>>> people might argue doesn't belong into `base` either is maybe
>>>>> `System.Console.GetOpt`; would you argue to split that off as well?
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> -Andrew Thaddeus Martin
>>>>
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