Hi Matthew!
1 & 3. Thank you very much for the information. :)
2 & 4. I'm slightly concerned that you seem to leave this kind of
decision to "the community", because last time I heard, the weekly
meetings of GHC developers are not necessarily advertised to said
community, and I fail to see how much of a democratic process it can be
if a significant portion of the decision-making process is done outside
of the community that you wish to make responsible for such important
things as LTS statuses (which is widely, widely incompatible with the
adoption of Haskell as a reliable foundation for industrial usage).
Moreover, if memory serves well, it was the GHC DevOps Group that pushed
for the 6-months release schedule (or at least I get a strong impression
of it reading this thread
https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devops-group/2017-October/000067.html).
Now looking at the mailing-list and updates, it would seem that the
group has disbanded, but I find it too bad that current GHCHQ doesn't
take on the responsibilities that are rightfully yours.
My question is: Do you intend to provide the community with the proper
information and means to make a decision, or at least express their
opinion? Or would you be rather more comfortable with the small subset
of people who post on ghc-devs to voice their opinion on the matter and
follow the trend? Is GHCHQ bound to these "community opinions"? Or can I
just pay WT to have it do what I want if I wish to decide on a different
course of action for the GHC release cycle. ;)
There is one point that you make that is quite worrisome:
> I suggest that the decision about whether the 9.4 release will attain
a similar
> status is left to the community rather than us (the developers) who
> lack perspective about how companies are using releases unless
explicitly told about it.
I sincerely believe that there is something lost in translation, because
from my ESL (English as a Second Language) perspective, this looks like
the 5-people team in charge of the compiler do not have any say in what
to release, when or even have no access to wider community information,
like what the State of Haskell Ecosystem surveys provide. But maybe
you'd like more help to figure out what are the broader usages of GHC,
and I can assure you that the Haskell Foundation would be immensely glad
to provide such insights.
And just so we are clear, I have nothing to reproach in terms of
engineering, it's all been wonderful from my perspective as both a
hobbyist and industrial user, and I know that product management isn't
necessarily the reason why you signed in on this, but it's an
unfortunate and essential part of the job that I'd like to clear out,
for everyone's sake. :)
Please do not take this as an attack against you and your team, and I'm
truly sorry if my phrasing have led to think so.
Cheers,
Hécate
Le 23/02/2022 à 16:55, Matthew Pickering a écrit :
1. We will provide a migration guide. The draft for the guide is
located here - https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/migration/9.4
2. 8.10 has never officially been an LTS but due to various reasons
has been a larger number of backports than other releases. I suggest
that the decision about whether the 9.4 release will attain a similar
status is left to the community rather than us (the developers) who
lack perspective about
how companies are using releases unless explicitly told about it.
3. The likely highlights was a list produced by Ben after the 9.2
release was finalised. Most (if not all) the features on the list will
be present in the release. Of course, comprehensive release notes will
be produced which detail all the new features and changes.
4. It is an unfortunate fact that whatever the proposed release
schedule has been that the releases have never actually come at those
timings. Again, I think we have to defer the question about release
frequency to the wider community. The decision about this release
cycle was made after considering the state of the master branch, which
features we wanted in the release and the availability of the release
managers.
Cheers,
Matt
On Tue, Feb 22, 2022 at 7:34 PM Hécate <hec...@glitchbra.in> wrote:
Hi Matthew, thank you for this update and the other one regarding your team.
I have multiple questions regarding the release:
1. Could a migration guide be provided? Or better, a script/tool? From
what I understand, going from 9.2 to 9.4 means breaking changes have
been introduced.
2. The 8.10 series has gained a status of LTS amongst industrial users,
thanks to both the numerous backports but also the wider support in the
ecosystem. Could you please clarify whether or not it will still be an
LTS after this release, and the status of 9.0 and 9.2 (which have
brought numerous new things themselves but seem to have been quickly
replaced by the next release each time). It's quite confusing, and when
the question arises in professional circles, a (seemingly) valid answer
that is brought up is "We can wait 6 more months and have a breaking
release that will force us to migrate painfully, let's not move yet".
3. From what I can see in the "Likely highlights" (this phrasing is
unclear to me, you don't expect some of those changes to make it to the
release?), it is mostly an engineering release (which is great). Do you
think that the 9.4 series could benefit from the same longevity as the
8.10 did and take its place as a continuously-improved version while
Language / R&D versions of GHC are published anew?
4. There was a talk of slowing the release schedule to once a year, and
last I heard, Ben was sympathetic to it. Could you express the official
position of your team on the matter?
Again, I'd like to echo Richard's words in the other thread, thank you
and your team for all this work, this is immensely appreciated.
Cheers,
Hécate
Le 22/02/2022 à 18:14, Matthew Pickering a écrit :
Hi all,
Firstly we are anticipating branching 9.4 in about 6 weeks time
(approx start of April). Most of the major features originally
milestoned[1] for this release have landed and the main branch is
currently in a nice state. This timeline will be solidified once the
9.2.2 release has been completed.
The major outstanding work that I am aware of is
Windows toolchain work (#21019) (Ben Gamari)
Partial Register Stall (#20405) (Andreas Klebinger)
hi-haddock (!6224) (Zubin Duggal / Matthew Pickering )
Directed Coercions (!6476) (Sam Derbyshire)
Secondly, we are anticipating adding a javascript backend inspired by
GHCJS as the highlight of the 9.6 release. This work is led by the
team at IOHK.
* The planning and progress of this process is tracked on this wiki
page - https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/javascript-backend
* We anticipate reviewing and merging patches incrementally into a
feature branch until the point where test coverage is suitable and the
patches can be merged into the main branch.
Cheers,
Matt
[1]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/milestones/370
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Hécate ✨
🐦: @TechnoEmpress
IRC: Hecate
WWW: https://glitchbra.in
RUN: BSD
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