[Nix-dev] GHC 7.4.1 and Haskell Platform (was: [Nix-commits] SVN commit: nix - r34059 - nixpkgs/trunk/pkgs/top-level)

[Andres Loeh]

Hi.

>  > I don't think we've ever made a decision to "support" 7.4.1 already. You
>  > seem to see this differently.
>
> Yes, exactly. I've been supporting GHC 7.4.1 for quite a while. I use it
> myself, and I support it in the sense that I don't commit any updates
> without testing first how they affect the 7.4.1 environment. I use monad-par
> in several of my projects, and I also heavily depend on Pandoc. The mtl
> update breaks those two packages, leaving me with a non-functional working
> environment! That situation is very unpleasant for me.
>
> Given the fact that the new HP standard hasn't been released yet, I feel
> that having a usable system is more important than conformance. That
> judgment is probably going to change once a new HP release has been made,
> but until then I'd rather have a system that actually works.

Our policy in the past has always been to support the latest Haskell
Platform version and treat everything beyond that as experimental. I'm
ok if you want to change that, but this wasn't a conscious decision we
ever made. In the future, we should try to be more clear about that.

So, as I said before, I'll make a extra set of defaults for 7.4.1
which is supposed to grow into the platform defaults, and you'll have
a choice which of the two to use.

Cheers,
  Andres