[Haskell] Announcing Haskell 2010

[Simon Marlow]

I'm very proud to announce a new revision of the Haskell language, 
Haskell 2010.  Over the last couple of months the committee has been 
making final decisions about which extensions should be a part of this 
revision.  The final list is:

DoAndIfThenElse
HierarchicalModules
EmptyDataDeclarations
FixityResolution
ForeignFunctionInterface
LineCommentSyntax
PatternGuards
RelaxedDependencyAnalysis
LanguagePragma
NoNPlusKPatterns

You can read more about each one, including rationale for and against, 
on its relevant wiki page, which are linked from the tickets:

http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&state=accepted&milestone=Haskell+2010&order=priority

Haskell 2010 is a small but significant step on the road that was 
started by the Haskell' committee 4 years ago,  The process has not been 
a smooth one, and there have been several changes of direction, but the 
current process is actually producing concrete results that let us move 
the language forward in positive steps, so I feel we're on the right track.

We all owe the current committee a big thank-you for sticking with the 
process this long: most of them didn't realise the magnitude of what 
they were signing up for at the beginning.  The short list of changes 
above tells only a small part of the story, there is a wealth of wiki 
content and mailing-list discussion that future language revisions can 
draw on.

So what now?

 * We will produce a revised version of the Haskell language report
   incorporating these changes.  That will happen over the next few
   months.

 * Compilers can start implementing the changes, and flags to
   select the Haskell 2010 revision.  In GHC we expect to have
   support in the next major release, i.e. 6.14.1.

 * Right now, we will start forming a Haskell 2011 committee to
   mange the process of deciding on changes for next year's revision.
   The current committee is still discussing how to go about
   finding a new committee (the plan is to at least have open
   nominations) but I expect to be able to announce more details
   very soon.

 * Everyone can participate in the Haskell 2011 process, by discussing
   and refining proposals.  Information about how to do that is on
   the Haskell Prime wiki:
   http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime/wiki

   Remember: this is a community effort.   The changes that get
   adopted in each revision are drawn from the pool of fully-specified
   proposals, and those proposals can be written by anyone.

Thanks,

Simon, on behalf of the Haskell 2010 committee

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