We have enough threads (2!) on ghc-base-splitting at the moment so I don’t want to derail this one, but yes at some point when the working groups meets and we’ve experimented with that more (not ready yet!), I would love to discuss the that effort with this working group.
IMO it seems inarguable that supporting multiple versions of things concurrently, whether it’s language or libraries, has clear benefits: more stability, experimenters/researchers are just as happy, etc. The question is about the costs of things like -std= for GCC/Clang, long transition periods for breaking changes in Rustc, etc.
So the fundamental questions are:
- How wide a status quo – brace new world window can we afford
- When the window is maxed out, which endpoint compromises more?