[darcs-users] 2.5.1

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

Hi,

2.5.1 is coming together. The main theme is support for latest GHC 
and other package upgrades (mtl, HTTP).

There's a list of patches I propose for it here: http://bit.ly/dOCZM8

and issues that are or will be resolved here: http://bit.ly/edGHki

Note that the following issues have been bumped for lack of a fix: 
http://bit.ly/hhROcW

This doesn't mean they aren't important, just that this release is 
becoming urgent since GHC 7 has been out a while and the Haskell Platform 
will soon be released too.

You'll note that many of the patches still need review. Most of them are 
fairly trivial and I will just push them to the branch without review if 
everything else is ready to go.

But patch527, which monkeys with the --set-default hint message, does need 
another pair of eyes, both to agree on the proposed UI, and to check my 
rather ugly hacking around with the darcs option handling code to make it 
work. So I'd appreciate a review as soon as possible for that. Remember 
you don't need to be on the review team to write a review, and you can 
just focus on one aspect if you don't feel qualified to comment on 
everything.

I also propose that we do not merge the 2.5.1 tag into HEAD. This will 
save us from some rather ugly conflicts, particularly in darcs.cabal. 
Instead I will pull what patches I can and forward port any others that 
aren't themselves backports.

The final issue is to do with a type system change in GHC 7. By default, 
local let bindings are no longer polymorphic, which requires either a 
bunch of rather ugly looking type signatures (about 40 of them; see 
patch524). Alternatively we can add the NoMonoLocalBinds extension and 
just add a single type signature (patch523). The disadvantage of that 
extension is that it's considered a bit of a hack by Simon PJ. See this 
thread on GHC-users for a bit more detail: 
http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/glasgow-haskell-users/2010-November/019444.html

My inclination is to go with patch523 for 2.5.1 as it's a smaller change 
overall, but make a fresh decision for HEAD.

If there is anything else you feel should be in 2.5.1 please let me know.

Cheers,

Ganesh