On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 5:03 PM, Johan Tibell <johan.tib...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I think reducing breakages is not necessarily, and maybe not even primarily, > an issue of releases. It's more about realizing that the cost of breaking > things (e.g. changing library APIs) has gone up as the Haskell community and > ecosystem has grown. We need to be conscious of that and carefully consider > if making a breaking change (e.g. changing a function instead of adding a > new function) is really necessary. Many platforms (e.g. Java and Python) > rarely, if ever, make breaking changes. If you look at compiler projects > (e.g. LLVM and GCC) you never see intentional breakages, even in major > releases*. Here's a question I think we should be asking ourselves: why is > the major version of base bumped with every release? Is it really necessary > to make breaking changes this often? How about aiming for having GHC 7.10 be > a release where we only add new stuff and improve old stuff? > > -- Johan > > * A major GCC release usually signifies that some large change to the code > generator was made.
I have some experience with GCC releases -- having served as a GCC Release Manager for several years. In fact, the release scheme we currently have has gone through several iterations -- usually after many "existential" crisis. Yes, we don't break GCC ABI lightly, mostly because GCC isn't a research compiler and most "research works" are done on forgotten branches that nobody cares about anymore. Implementing new standards (e.g. moving from C++03 to C++11 that has several mandated API and ABI breakage) is a royal pain that isn't worth replicating in GHC -- at least if you want GHC to remain a research compiler. Concerning your question about release number, I would venture that there is a certain "marketing" aspect to it. I can tell you that we, the GCC community, are very poor at that -- otherwise, we would have been at version 26 or something :-) -- Gaby _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
