> > I also think that having backwards compatability is not much of an
> > issue. After all, ghc has introduces a number of not backward
> > compatable changes to haskell, and I never heard any complaints.
>
> Oh no?
>
> Implicit parameters: I'm sure it is a great thing, but I'd already
> used the (?) operator, and need -fglasgow-exts. Now my program
> depends on a bunch of well places spaces to compile.
>
> Template Haskell: really cool new feature, which just happens to use
> a syntax that overlaps with the list comprehension syntax.
>
> And now, let's just screw any backwards compatibility, and re-engineer
> the records systemı.
We at GHC HQ agree, and for future extensions we'll move to using separate options to
enable them rather than lumping everything into -fglasgow-exts. This is starting to
happen already: we have -farrows, -fwith, -fffi (currently implied by -fglasgow-exts).
Of course, if we change the language that is implied by -fglasgow-exts now, we risk
breaking old code :-) Would folk prefer existing syntax extensions be moved into
their own flags, or left in -fglasgow-exts for now? I'm thinking of:
- implicit parameters
- template haskell
- FFI
- rank-N polymorphism (forall keyword)
- recursive 'do' (mdo keyword)
Cheers,
Simon
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