Hello Jens,

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

Thanks for taking time to reply. I do not know people around here, I assume
this helpful Tristan is the same as the one in the SIG’s meeting logs dated to
June 9, 2020 (UTC); anyway, thank you Tristan very much.

[…]
> It does have one advantage that it allows canonical installation of a
> different version of a package without any packaging tweaks or hacks though.
[…]
> 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?
[…]
> I am tracking Stackage LTS releases.
> Fedora 32 is based on LTS 14 […]

Now, I understand how the decision about which packages and which versions to
ship is made.

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

I am suggesting to untie the release of GHC packages from other packages’, as
long as the latter are not in the “boot” set[^1]. Id est, if upstream releases
GHC version λ, my inquiry is about whether Fedora could release ghc-λ
regardless of which Stackage snapshots are based on ghc-λ.

Such a suggestion might be nonsense in face of how packaging is done in
Fedora, so please correct me if I am way off on the technical side. Currently,
my understanding is that the state of affairs is as it is because

* it is a great __convenience__ to have a source of assurance (Stackage) that
  hundreds of upstream packages will build successfully;
* most of those packages are taken care of in Fedora by a single person (Jens)
  who, by the way, is an upstream Stackager, thus relying on Stackage is
  “natural”.

To be clear, may the above be close to the reality, I do not object against 
any of it: people who put in the work make the choices in FOS.

As of why should I bother using the latest upstream GHC, the answer is the
same as the reason I use Fedora in the first place: I want “bleeding-edge” yet
solid software without _Gentoo-ing_ everything. So why don’t I switch to 
modularity streams? Parallel installs and partial upgrades is not my use case;
I upgrade the whole distribution at once.

It may be the case that properly doing something along the lines of my
suggestion would lead to mimicking what is done in Fedora Rust or Fedora Go, I
am unclear on the details. Is it so? For instance, the GCC maintainers upgrade
it independently of the release schedule of, say Boost[^2].

Regards,
h.


[^1]: `array`, `base`, `binary`, `bytestring`…
[^2]: Like all analogies, this one has flaws, too. GCC upgrade involves mass
rebuilds, side tags, etc. Maybe Stackage helps avoid churns like that.

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