Haskell-Platform Committee Action!

[Isaac Dupree]

I need to ask y'all: are library patch proposals (like "Proposal: Add 
chop function to Data.List") part of our mission?  Mostly all the 
libraries maintained by libraries at haskell.org are part of the Haskell 
Platform now (though not vice versa), so I imagine so.

There are about six active library proposals currently, it turns out: 
I'd assign one to each of us to keep an eye on, if you're amenable to 
that. (And continue a rotation as these proposals finish and new 
proposals appear).

I'm thinking that facilitating the small proposals is not that much 
extra work for us, and good practice.  The proposer might merely need 
some help making the ticket/deadline/patch and remembering to conclude 
the proposal afterwards.  The technical discussion is small enough to 
keep in one's head all at once.  In many cases we won't need to post at 
all.  Yet that little facilitation done everywhere it's needed could 
make the atmosphere so much nicer and more reliable.

Existing policy documents:
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions
http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/AddingPackages
http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/Members
(The "Library submissions" and "Adding packages" policies are similar 
enough that when it's not obvious which category a change falls into, 
we've still known how to make a decision.)
(If we do get specific people maintaining some core libraries, they 
would take over from libraries@ in reviewing the small changes.  Then 
libraries@ would probably only meddle at the time of year when HP tries 
to upgrade all its packages to the latest version.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I researched the past month or two of libraries at haskell.org and am 
prepared to e-mail the following to libraries at . (First I shall change 
the paragraph about the Steering Committee according to our will) :

"Being aware of our proposals."
*******************************
We have collectively made approximately six formal proposals to the 
Haskell Platform libraries within the past month (or 
should-be-formalized proposals).  None are yet resolved to be yea or nay 
(or let's-change-it-this-way-and-yea).  This is normal, given our 
generous deadlines.  Some of these proposals, however, are now awaiting 
some action and not some deadline.

We can, however, celebrate last month's acceptance of "Export String 
from Data.String", and package 'text', and maybe there were more!

(It would be interesting to gather long-term statistics, but I didn't.)

The active proposals:

"Add Data.Functor.Backwards to transformers" #4517 [1] Status: ticketed 
(in GHC Trac, which is correct for a library proposal), but no deadline, 
also some controversy on details. Proposer Russell O'Connor (roconnor, 
r6) -- with Ross Paterson, the maintainer of 'transformers', taking an 
interest too.)

"Proposal: Add tryReadChan to Chan" #4535 (status: no deadline, no 
conclusion yet, but it *is* a patch to a public module in 'base'. 
Proposer Mitar.)

"Make Chan an instance of Eq" #4537(?) (status: looks slightly 
disorganized and possibly forgotten; a deadline was mentioned, on the 
mailinglist only, of Dec. 2; also the patch scope was slightly expanded 
after Duncan's suggestion on the mailing-list.  Proposer: Mitar.)

"Functor => Applicative => Monad" #4834 (status: formal proposal, 
deadline 1 February. Proposer John Smith.)

"Proposal: Add chop function to Data.List" (status: no ticket, but 
clearly intended to be a formal proposal. Proposer Lennart Augustsson.)

"Proposal: keep Data.Map.foldWithKey" #4842 (status: ticketed, deadline 
15 January. Proposer Christian Maeder.)

[1] Ticket #s reference GHC trac, e.g. #4517 is
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/4517

I encourage you to re-read any thread that interests you and see if you 
can make a comment that leads it towards a conclusion.

I've also assigned* a Steering Committee member to each proposal to keep 
an eye on it, just as a safeguard to keep us from forgetting, and 
perhaps to assist with the formality of our consensus-process.
*(tentatively volunteering as Haskell Platform Steering Committee chair)

Happy Hacking and Happy Holidays,
Isaac
on behalf of the Haskell Platform Steering Committee
******************************************************