My main motivation was that I had a vague idea, not remotely ready for a proposal, and wanted a place to try hashing it out. My limited experience with glasgow-haskell-users is that it's where threads go to die. Haskell-cafe might work, but it's a bit tricky to pull up all the language extension ideas discussed there. So I figured maybe the ghc-proposals issue tracker would be the best way. Might be worth a try, anyway.
On Wed, May 2, 2018, 5:54 AM Anthony Clayden <anthony_clay...@clear.net.nz> wrote: > > On Wed, 2 May 2018 at 8:28 PM, Simon Peyton Jones <redir...@vodafone.co.nz> > wrote: > >> | > Sometimes, a language extension idea could benefit from >> | some community discussion before it's ready for a formal proposal. >> | >> | Can I point out it's not only ghc developers who make proposals. > > | I'd rather you post this idea more widely. >> > > (I meant for David to post more widely the idea of using Github issues > tracker. Because I suspect the people who would most benefit from the > 'community discussion' are not participants on ghc-devs.) > > >> The Right Thing is surely for the main GHC proposals pav[g]e >> https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals >> to describe how you can up a "pre-proposal". That is, document >> the entire process in one, easy to find, place. >> >> Mind you, I'm unclear about the distinction between a pre-proposal >> and a proposal. ... > > > Thanks Simon, > > Speaking as a non-developer of ghc, often there's a bright idea with no > very clear notion how best it fits into Haskell, or could be implemented > effectively/efficiently: > > * maybe it's something seen in another language; > * maybe the proposer finds themself writing the same boilerplate > repeatedly, and wonders if that's a common idiom the language could capture; > * sometimes it starts as more of a 'how do I do this?' question; then you > get told you can't; then other people chip in with 'yes I'd like to do that > too'. > * sometimes it's more of a niggle: this really annoys me/is awkward/is > confusing every time I bump into it/even though I can work round it. > > > Both are drafts that invite community discussion, >> prior to submitting to the committee for decision. >> > > I'm guessing as to why David raised the question. I've noticed (a minority > of) proposals generate a huge amount of discussion, a lot of which is: you > can already do that, or nearly all of that, or there's good reasons why > ghc/Haskell shouldn't do that. Then maybe the difficulty that needs > tackling is that the submitter isn't really following the process/perhaps > the process document should be clearer about what threshold of readiness > the ideas should be in before formalising(?) I'll try to avoid specifics > here, but two proposals I can think of essentially amounted to: Language > XXX has YYY; language XXX is similar to Haskell; I think YYY is great; > please put YYY in Haskell; P.S. I don't really understand ghc and all the > extensions it now offers. > > As you've remarked yourself, sometimes the 'community discussion' gets so > convoluted and sidetracked it's impossible to make out where the proposal > is at, and whether all objections have been addressed. That's the point at > which IMO the proposal should be withdrawn and resubmitted as a 'fresh > start'. > > OTOH, as I said, there's plenty of other forums those less > formal/pre-proposal discussions could happen. Some used to happen on > Trac/started life as bug reports -- which is rightfully discouraged. > _Could_ happen but often doesn't raise a response. What if Github issues > tracker just becomes another backwater where ideas go to get ignored? > > > AntC > > >> >> | -----Original Message----- >> | From: Glasgow-haskell-users <glasgow-haskell-users- >> | boun...@haskell.org> On Behalf Of Anthony Clayden >> | Sent: 02 May 2018 02:34 >> | To: glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org; ghc-d...@haskell.org >> | Subject: Re: Open up the issues tracker on ghc-proposals >> | >> | > On May 1, 2018, at 2:24 PM, David Feuer <david.feuer at >> | gmail.com> wrote: >> | > >> | > Sometimes, a language extension idea could benefit from >> | some community discussion before it's ready for a formal proposal. >> | >> | Can I point out it's not only ghc developers who make proposals. I'd >> | rather you post this idea more widely. >> | >> | As a datapoint, I found ghc-users and the café just fine for those >> | discussions. >> | Ghc-users seems to have very low traffic/is rather wasted currently. >> | And I believe a lot of people pre-discuss on reddit. >> | For ideas that have been on the back burner for a long time, there's >> | often wiki pages. (For example re Quantified >> | Constraints.) >> | >> | > I'd like to propose that we open up the GitHub issues >> | tracker for ghc-proposals to serve as a place to discuss pre-proposal >> | ideas. Once those discussions converge on one or a few specific plans, >> | someone can write a proper proposal. >> | >> | I'm not against that. There gets to be a lot of cruft on some >> | discussions about proposals, so I'd expect we could archive it all >> | once a proposal is more formalised. >> | >> > _______________________________________________ > Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list > Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users >
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