Hi, not sure why this mail didn't read my inbox...
Tristan kindly pointed it out to me today.

> Let me start with a probably wrong statement: it seems that the Modularity 
> project allows for packaging and installing many major releases for the same 
> package. I gather that is a great upside for packagers like Jens, especially 
> in face of the way Haskell projects manage dependencies.

TBH I am not entirely convinced modules are ideal for Haskell, but it is there 
is now.
It does have one advantage that it allows canonical installation of a different 
version of a package without any packaging tweaks or hacks though.
Perhaps that is what you mean. :)

> People who are not really into Modularity can disable the relevant 
> repositories. That is where begin my troubles — because I am not a Modularity 
> user. I would like to install a packaged GHC and its its dependencies, and 
> only that; for any other Haskell package, I can do the build myself. The 
> issue 
> is that Fedora non-modular repositories ship an old GHC, namely version
> GHC-8.6.5. The modular repositories, however, are very up-to-date.

So err, why not use the modules? :)
I am not clear on your objection to using modules.
It seems to me the ghc:8.10 module already does exactly what you want.

What do you need from ghc-8.10 btw?

Personally I have found ghc-8.6.5 is still fine for me and I can use stack if I 
need a newer or older ghc.

> Considering the staggering efforts Jens puts into maintaining a large scale 
> of 
> Haskell packages, I first thought he downright gave up on packaging non-
> modular GHC due to intractable reasons; so, I embarked on a journey of 
> building stuff to see where things might break.

No that is not the case - I am tracking Stackage LTS releases.
Fedora 32 is based on LTS 14 (LTS 15 was a little late to make the last 
release).
Fedora 33 will hopefully rebase to LTS 15 or 16 with ghc-8.8.3.

> But, I have not seen anything break (yet?). If I download the SRPMs Jens 
> makes 
> for modular repositories, they build fine as ursine packages, and I guess 
> that 
> is not surprising. The apparent downside is using the --allowerasing option 
> when dnf-installing them; as I wrote above, that is not an issue for the use 
> case I outlined: all non-boot packages can be built on-demand according to 
> the 
> local application settings; IMHO avoiding global package databases should be 
> an uncontroversial practice.

Are you proposing we deal with Haskell packages like Fedora Rust?
ie only ship sources?

> 2. Do the built binaries behave as expected?

I am not sure of your point here: your local build is basically equivalent to 
the module build.

> So, I have a couple of questions: What are the reasons behind letting  
> GHC-8.6.5 linger in non-modular repositories whereas a fresh compiler could 
> take its place? Is there anything third parties could do to alleviate the 
> burden Jens has certainly to shoulder? Would be there a way to avoid non-
> modular users having to build GHC from sources every time there is a new 
> release?

I think I answered this above - I am tracking Stackage LTS, and it lags behind 
ghc major releases.
Even today Stackage Nightly is still on ghc-8.8.3.

Just to clarify this isn't just only about ghc - it is about the ~500 haskell 
packages we have in Fedora.

We also have stack now in Fedora, though it is not the latest version (like 
cabal-install).

> It goes without saying, I am very grateful to everything Jens has done and 
> does for this SIG.

Thank you I appreciate your words.

If you have more questions, do ask.

Jens
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