[Haskell] Re: Trying to install binary-0.4

[Claus Reinke]

>> - Provide a replacement configuration for GHC 6.6 and 6.4 (yes, that one
>>   is still alive!) that removes the conflict between 'base' and
>>   'bytestring' and pretends to provide bytestring, containers, array,
>>   etc.
> 
> People interested in making it easy to use new versions of packages with
> old compiler releases can make a small script that installs empty Cabal
> packages called bytestring, containers, array, etc.

there are implicit assumptions in most package managers:

- unless you ask for a specific package version, 
    any version will do

- if you need a minimum feature set, giving a *lower*
    bound for the package version will do

unless you want to keep updating your package spec
every time a new version of  a dependency comes out,
you really do not want to give *upper* bounds on 
package versions.

haskell software frequently violates both assumptions,
deprecating features for one or two a minor versions, 
then abandoning them in the next.

but calling "split-base" "base" goes directly against all 
basic assumptions of all packages depending on "base".

i don't know whether the first intel ai should really still
be expected to run the original excel code without change,
but suggesting that people keep going back to make 
old software compatible with continuosly changing 
new assumptions does not sound right at all.

claus