HP Package Requirements (was: Haskell Platform proposal: Add case-insensitive)

[Gregory Collins]

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 8:07 AM, Herbert Valerio Riedel <hvr at gnu.org> wrote:

> | Every package should fulfil the following requirements. Any
> | requirements that are not met must be clearly explained and justified
> | in the proposal.
> |
> | [...]
> |
> | - Compile on all operating systems and compilers that the platform
> |   targets. [rationale-8.4]
>
> But I couldn't find any explictly stated list which compilers beyond GHC
> (and which version(s) of GHC?) the HP actually wants to target.
>

As of right now, there is exactly one production-quality Haskell
implementation, which is the only one the platform targets, so by
definition a library using GHC-specific features is appropriate for
inclusion in the platform. An argument can be made to change the
definition, but that's what it is right now.

A especially strong -1 from me to any effort to enforce Haskell 98
compatibility for Haskell Platform packages: that standard is 15 years old
now, and has been superseded by Haskell 2010. At this point I think the
argument for standards breaks down altogether because there's only one
conformant Haskell 2010 implementation. It's not GHC's fault it doesn't
have viable competitors: we shouldn't be making busy-work for package
authors to make their code portable to other Haskell implementations that
don't exist yet.

G
-- 
Gregory Collins <greg at gregorycollins.net>
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