qualified imports, PVP and so on (Was: add new Data.Bits.Bits(bitZero) method)

[Daniel Trstenjak]

Hi Brandon,

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:12:29AM -0500, Brandon Allbery wrote:
> Is it better to save a developer some work, or is it better to force that work
> onto end users?

What is an end user? Someone installing a package containing an executable?
Then the package is an end point in the dependency graph and the PVP can
work pretty well for this case.

But if the package contains a library, then the end user is also the
developer, so you can only choose which kind of pain you prefer.

> Because we keep constantly seeing examples where saving the developer some
> upper bounds PVP work forces users to deal with unexpected errors, but since
> Haskell developers don't see that user pain it is considered irrelevant/
> nonexistent and certainly not any justification for saving developers some
> work.

I think that in most cases it doesn't really make much difference for the
end user, if they're seeing a package version mismatch or if they're
seeing a compile error.

Sure, the package version mismatch is more telling, but in most cases he
will be equally lost and has to ask for help.


Greetings,
Daniel