On 2014-04-10 13:52, Herbert Valerio Riedel wrote:

Just a thought: Maybe the requirement levels stated in the PVP in terms of may/should/must could benefit from a bit more formalization in terms of something like RFC2119.

[RFC2119]: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119

+1. (I think that the RFCs terms may actually have been the intended meaning, but it could definitely stand to be spelled out explicitly in either case.)

It seems like this issue has clearly been the source of disagreement/misunderstanding, so +1 from me too. The harder question is precisely what changes should be made. On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Austin Seipp wrote:

I also like this change, and a lot of people use RFC2119 formalization even without direct reference I find. So I'm +1 on adopting it.

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 7:25 AM, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

...

On 2014-04-10 13:52, Herbert Valerio Riedel wrote:

...

Just a thought: Maybe the requirement levels stated in the PVP in terms of may/should/must could benefit from a bit more formalization in terms of something like RFC2119.

[RFC2119]: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119

+1. (I think that the RFCs terms may actually have been the intended meaning, but it could definitely stand to be spelled out explicitly in either case.)

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-- Regards,

Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/ _______________________________________________ Libraries mailing list Libraries@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries

On 2014-04-10 15:41, Vincent Hanquez wrote:

On 2014-04-10 13:52, MightyByte wrote:

...

It seems like this issue has clearly been the source of disagreement/misunderstanding, so +1 from me too. The harder question is precisely what changes should be made. Oh please.

Don't be to quick to judge -- I think applying the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity might be in order (and not just in this particular sub-thread). There may be quite a bit of wiggle-room for interpretation here, but... (see below)

Otherwise I'm all for (+1) spelling out that the PvP is following RFC2119; there's no harm for being crystal clear about this.

Maybe you should just officially propose a simple amendment to the PVP stating this and we'll see how many (or: if any) of the originators of the PVP (dis)agree? Of course, we'll also see how many other interested parties (dis)agree. Personally, I'd weigh the opinions of the originators significantly more heavily of course, but this *is* a pseudo-democratic process, so let's see what happens :) Regards,

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 9:41 AM, Vincent Hanquez wrote:

On 2014-04-10 13:52, MightyByte wrote:

...

It seems like this issue has clearly been the source of disagreement/misunderstanding, so +1 from me too. The harder question is precisely what changes should be made.

English speakers (which many PvP original authors are) would have very likely the correct (and RFC2119 compliant) understanding of those words.

Not at all. Natural spoken English simply isn't that precise. From http://thesaurus.com/browse/should: "As with shall and will, most educated native speakers of American English do not follow the textbook rule in making a choice between should and would. See also shall." The PVP is not written in the style of RFC2119, so I think it's quite reasonable to interpret it as you would interpret normal English speech. "When publishing a Cabal package, you should ensure that your dependencies in the build-depends field are accurate. This means specifying not only lower bounds, but also upper bounds on every dependency." I as a native English speaker read that to mean that upper bounds MUST be specified on every dependency if you want to comply with the spirit of that document.

Suggesting that this was the source of disagreement/misunderstanding, is in my opinion disingenuous at best.

No. Now we see that this is exactly the source of at least one misunderstanding.

Otherwise I'm all for (+1) spelling out that the PvP is following RFC2119; there's no harm for being crystal clear about this.

Here we're in agreement.

There are no uses of the string "MUST", so I did not use the RFC2119 interpretation. When I read "not only lower bounds, but also upper bounds on every dependency" I interpret that to be a pretty strong imperative. So let's definitely get this clarified. On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 10:17 AM, Vincent Hanquez wrote:

On 2014-04-10 15:04, MightyByte wrote:

...

The PVP is not written in the style of RFC2119, so I think it's quite reasonable to interpret it as you would interpret normal English speech.

"When publishing a Cabal package, you should ensure that your dependencies in the build-depends field are accurate. This means specifying not only lower bounds, but also upper bounds on every dependency."

I as a native English speaker read that to mean that upper bounds MUST be specified on every dependency if you want to comply with the spirit of that document.

There would be maybe some doubts, provided that was the only use, but you can find MUST correctly specified in the first section multiple times. For me, it's a clear sign that the authors meant to differentiate between the levels.

-- Vincent

Hello *, To get the balling rolling, I've converted the mediawiki version of the PVP to markdown for easy editing via GitHub. Please note this is just a suggestion, there a certainly other possible workflows for collaborative editing; However using GitHub provides the following features: - A web-based Markdown editor - Decentralized: everyone can fork the repo (and you can see the fork-graph), everyone can steal (aka 'git pull') each others commit into his own repo. - Branching inside a repo (e.g. for multiple variants) - Annotating/commenting patches TLDR: feel free to fork (or ignore) https://github.com/hvr/PVP HTH hvr On 2014-04-10 at 16:36:59 +0200, Mark Lentczner wrote:

1) The PVP is not written in RFC style: It is conversational and addresses the reader direction. 2) It's terms aren't those of RFC 2119. 3) The phrase "you should ensure" in section 3 was clearly meant that it was expected of the maintainer. Including upper bounds.

Now, if someone would like to have a go at re-writing the PVP in the style of an RFC, so that if PVP conformance is more rigorously defined, (which will surely explicitly reference RFC 2119), please write up a version (and a new thread) and we'll discuss it.

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