Recommendation for the procedure to add platform packages

[Duncan Coutts]

All,

The Haskell Platform steering committee have been very busy over the
past two weeks drafting, discussing and redrafting. 

The result is our recommendation to the libraries list for a procedure
for adding new packages to the Haskell Platform.

Before you all go off and read it, we'd like to say what feedback we are
looking for and what the next steps will be. The document we've come up
with describes the procedure but only some very basic quality
requirements for packages. Our aim is to have the libraries list come to
an agreement on the procedure first and then we can discuss codifying a
more comprehensive set of package requirements and guidelines.

The main document contains:
      * the procedure itself, which is relatively short
      * a rationale, cross-linked to the procedure
      * a procedure to help us make decisions

http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/AddingPackages

There is an accompanying "how to" guide to help the people who will
actually be making proposals:

http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/AddingPackages/HowTo

There is also an example proposal:

http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/Proposals/example

So please send in your comments and of course feel free to ask questions
and seek clarifications. Our hope is that we'll be able to agree this
procedure stuff relatively quickly and then move onto package quality
issues and indeed to actually start proposing packages.


Let me also say that I've been very pleased with how the steering
committee has worked. People have put in a lot of effort. It took 2
weeks, nearly 60 emails and over 100 edits to the draft. We didn't
always agree but we talked things through thoroughly and turned our
early draft into something much better that we're all satisfied with.

Duncan,
  on behalf of the rest of the steering committee:
  Iavor Diatchki, Isaac Dupree, Thomas Schilling,
  Johan Tibell and Adam Wick.