# Fork \`basement\`? As \`baseplate\`?

**URL:** <https://discourse.haskell.org/t/fork-basement-as-baseplate/12415>\
**Category:** Learn\
**Created:** [July 5, 2025, 6:13pm UTC](https://discourse.haskell.org/t/fork-basement-as-baseplate/12415 "2025-07-05T18:13:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 53

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**Author:** ![philh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@philh](https://discourse.haskell.org/u/philh)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2026, 10:39pm UTC](https://discourse.haskell.org/t/fork-basement-as-baseplate/12415/53 "2026-02-26T22:39:57Z")

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> [@turion](#):
>
> I’d be in favour of a tiered system:

I like this, but I’m toying in my mind with a slight adjustment: you get a non-prefixed name by default. If I’m the first person to publish a package named `acme-missiles`, then I get both `@philh/acme-missiles` and a global `acme-missles` pointing at it. Someone else can publish `@hilph/acme-missiles`, and it doesn’t need to have any relationship to mine but conventionally it would be a fork.

We’d expect users typically specify just `acme-missiles`. If I’m a bad maintainer, a hackage admin can point that name at hilph’s version, and the ecosystem gets updates for free; anyone who wants to get ahead of the hackage admins can explicitly specify hilph’s copy, and anyone who thinks they’re making a mistake can explicitly specify mine.

This still means that the global namespace gets eaten up over time. Maybe someone creates a `cgi` (as in Common Gateway Interface) in 1995, and in 2025, it hasn’t compiled or even had any forks that compile for a decade. Someone still can’t, by default, say “I want to create a package for computer generated imagery”, call it `cgi`, and get the global pointer. I think this is fine?

> [@Ambrose](#):
>
> I mean..in that case..why not kick this can to cabal? Let me say “solve package name X as name Y” in my cabal.project. No need to have a syntax level namespace thing.

Whether or not my above idea is a good one, I think we want this.

We can already kinda do it with “solve package X from github repo at URL Y”, right? But explicit support would make it a lot more ergonomic.

I do think there are awkward questions around: suppose I depend on `a` and `b`, which both depend on `x`. `x` gets forked into `x2`, and `a` updates to use that but `b` doesn’t. I say “`x` is provided by `x2` instead”. Are types `x2:X.T` (visible to me via `a`) and `x:X.T` (visible to me via `b`) the same type? We can’t get into this situation with github right now I think, because if you point at a github repo it needs to know what name you use it as.

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