constructors === id

[FintanH]

Phase 2 of #244

Changes constructors to the identity function. Marking it as deprecated and a the projection operator . should be used instead.

[f-f]

@Gabriel439 since this is technically breaking should we have a (minor) release with #249 first (that is, before merging this) so there's a migration path?

[Gabriella439]

@f-f: Alright, then let's defer merging this until after the next release to ease the migration process

[FintanH]

@f-f This is good to revisit right? I almost forgot about it until I was telling a friend about Dhall and he saw I had a branch 😅

[f-f]

@FintanH right, it's time for a new release, which I'm not sure if it's going to be breaking (e.g. I think 55475f7 is breaking?)
So if the release is going to be breaking we can merge before releasing, otherwise we should release a minor version and then merge this.

In the meanwhile tests got moved here, so I'd ask you to add some tests to cover this change 😄

[FintanH]

@f-f Added the identity test under normalization 😸

[FintanH]

Discussed with @f-f and our plan is to prepare for a release on 19th of Nov since this contains breaking changes. Does this line up with you @Gabriel439?

[f-f]

I'll clarify that if the upcoming release is not breaking (i.e. minor) we should release first and then merge, otherwise we'll merge this in the upcoming release.
Another possibility is that we tag the minor release to af53b07, but this would probably mean there won't be a paired dhall-haskell release

[Gabriella439]

@f-f: #263 is a breaking change that has been introduced since the last release

However, I still think we should cut a release before merging this, regardless of other breaking changes, so that people have a smooth migration path for constructors-related code

[Gabriella439]

@FintanH: Yeah, feel free to cut a release. I'm prepared to cut a release of the Haskell implementation at any time. I usually cut releases for both the standard and the Haskell implementation roughly every 30 days, and it's been almost 30 days since the last release.

[FintanH]

Ok, cool. Just so I'm clear on this, I need to:

• update this branch ✔️
• bump the version to 4.0.0
• wait 3 days and merge?

[Gabriella439]

@FintanH: What I mean is that we should first cut a 4.0.0 release containing just the change that adds support for UnionType.foo from #249 (i.e. the 4.0.0 release would not include the change in this branch). Then after that release we would merge in this branch which would be made available as part of release 5.0.0 (whenever we cut that, possibly in another 30 days).

In the intervening time between cutting the 4.0.0 release and the 5.0.0 release, though, this behavior could still be available for you to use on master for the Haskell implementation.

[FintanH]

Ahhh cool, makes sense! We're not in a rush to get it since we figured out the merging of records issue :)