2024-02-05.md

tags
swg

SWG 2024-02-05

Meeting URL: https://meet.jit.si/StableHaskellMeetBiWeekly

Previous meeting notes

Agenda & Notes

New items to discuss

• Fortified language editions

  • To discuss next time

• Question: How "experimental" is Experimental? Some hard cases

  • If too much is "experimental" it loses its value.
  • Simple policies are good. It would be good to say "we don't use experimental features"
  • Type families: the current design really is not fully satisfying. But they are so widely used that it'll force too many uses to accept experimental-ness. Put another way, this wide use means that GHC devs should be careful about breaking changes (as in #625).
  • Action working group: contribute to #635.

• Question: how important are the "library stability" proposals?

  • Reinstallable base
  • A more stable Template Haskell API

  If important, then we could (a) more precisely specify the task, (b) figure out how much it would cost, and (c) seek resources to get something done.

• Discussed a possible tightly-focused survey, along the lines of last times's notes.

  • How to get it to the right people?

    • Scrape Hackage maintainer addresses
    • Write specifically to sponsors
    • Haskell Discourse, ghc-devs

  • Need to refine the list of obstacles.

  • Get help from Taylor F? Who used to run the State of Haskell survey.

  • Perhaps ask for the direct dependencies that are blockers when upgrading?

Jappie's proposed survey

Who are you?

• a student
• a professional developer
• a researcher

I use haskell

• a couple times per day
• a couple times per month
• a couple times per year

I use haskell for

• hobby programming
• some commercial software
• both

what stops you from upgrading ghc?

what are your major pain points when upgrading ghc ?

are there any dependencies that caused upgrade issues? if yes please list them

Short-Term Action Items From Previous

• None

In progress projects

Updates

• Extension lifecycle framework proposal #601

  • Under renovation to serve as basis for Renovating GHC's extensions mechanism #628 and Articulate stability goals #625
  • Pretty short: Experimental, Stable, Discouraged, Deprecated.
  • Relates to Adam's classification proposal #635

• Simon's list of GHC-related stability issues

• Three-release policy

• Bulletin discussed previously

  • Previously holding the token: Chris

• GHC warning policy document as discussed previously

  • Previously holding the token: Chris

Parked Action Items/Projects due to expected absence of token holder

New for next week

Action items

Discussion items