Editing Compatibility Modules (section)

= Motivation =

It can be difficult to write code that maintains compatibility with multiple versions of dependencies. In many cases, a library author can decide to require users to upgrade to a more recent version of dependencies. However, in the case of libraries bundled with GHC, this means upgrading the compiler, which in many cases is not an option.

One possible response would be to try and lock down the APIs for these libraries to avoid any migration headaches. However, such an approach would ultimately lead to quite convoluted APIs at the core of our ecosystem.

Instead, the core libraries committee has recommended an approach of releasing compatibility packages for each version of the base package. This document will lay out the design decisions we recommend, and why we decided on them.