wither the Platform

[Carlton Mills]

Greetings,  I would like to thank you for creating and maintaining the Haskell Platform. I have tried to be supportive by installing release candidates and reporting any problems (usually none.)   I have been a Haskell 'lurker' for a few years; I have yet to do any significant Haskell programming. But I recommend the platform to others who want to learn Haskell.  The Platform seems, to me, to be Haskell for grown ups; people who are creating programs for use by others and are paid to do it. Maybe Haskell for the professional. The implicit promise of the Platform is that this years program will work next year; that the libraries will inter-operate in 2017. I will be able to recompile on HP 2017 with minimal changes required.  Is there any alternative for someone who doesn't want to be forced to learn installation judo or how to avoid Cabal hell? If one wants to be a professional and produce reliable code that is maintainable through time, what else should she use?
Thank you, Carlton Mills, Urbana, IL 


     On Saturday, March 21, 2015 12:55 PM, Mark Lentczner <mark.lentczner at gmail.com> wrote:
   

 I'm wondering how we are all feeling about the platform these days....
I notice that in the new Haskell pages, the Platform is definitely not the recommended way to go: The main download pages suggests the compiler and base libraries as the first option - and the text for the Platform (second option) pretty much steers folks away from it. Of the per-OS download pages, only the Windows version even mentions it.
Does this mean that we don't want to consider continuing with it? It is a lot of community effort to put out a Platform release - we shouldn't do it if we don't really want it.
That said, I note that the other ways to "officially get" Haskell look, to my eye, very ad hoc. Many of the options involve multiple steps, and exactly what one is getting isn't clear. It hardly looks like there is now an "official, correct" way to setup Haskell.
The Platform arose in an era before sandboxes and before curated library sets like Stackage and LTS. Last time we set direction was several years ago. These new features and development have clearly changed the landscape for use to reconsider what to do.

I don't think the status quo for the Platform is now viable - mostly as evidenced by waning interest in maintaining it. I offer several ways we could proceed:
1) Abandon the Platform. GHC is release in source and binary form. Other package various installers, with more or less things, for various OSes.
2) Slim the Platform. Pare it back to GHC + base + a smaller set of "essential" libs + tools. Keeps a consistent build layout and installation mechanism for Haskell.
3) Re-conceive the Platform. Take a very minimal install approach, coupled with close integration with a curated library set that makes it easy to have a rich canonical, stable environment. This was the core idea around my "GPS Haskell" thoughts from last September - but there would be much to work out in this direction.
Thoughts?
— Mark


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