[HN Gopher] An Elm Fork
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An Elm Fork
Author : jgilias
Score : 85 points
Date : 2023-06-10 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gren-lang.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (gren-lang.org)
| sshine wrote:
| Beautiful!
|
| Maintaining a fork of Elm open to development is a big
| commitment. But one that will be well received by many.
|
| I look forward to trying it.
| G4BB3R wrote:
| It is not a fork, it started as fork to save time, but
| targets/focus on node and will diverge from Elm.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| I don't understand. How does that make it not a fork?
| adeon wrote:
| I think maybe the authors are using a strange definition of
| "fork": if you fork a project and then take it to a different
| direction, making incompatible changes from upstream then
| it's somehow not a fork anymore. I'm not too sure though if
| that's the thinking. (reading from https://gren-
| lang.org/book/faq.html)
|
| Seems like a fork to me.
|
| Or maybe the thinking is that they'll rewrite it from scratch
| at some point which would make it not a fork from code
| perspective.
| benatkin wrote:
| It's a type of a fork but not the kind someone would expect
| after reading the headline.
|
| The FAQ has a similar description, but doesn't make the
| assertion that it's not a fork, which I disagree with:
|
| > Gren started as a fork of Elm. This is mostly considered to
| be an implementation detail, a way to speed up initial
| development.
|
| > It's not a goal of Gren to replace, or stay compatible in
| any way with, Elm.
|
| https://gren-lang.org/book/faq.html#what-is-the-
| relationship...
| jgilias wrote:
| A fork is a fork. If Elm development was open to the
| community and the author could've just added Node support
| to Elm do you think Gren would exist?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Meh, it only happened to fork Elm to bootstrap early
| development and had no plans to carry on with Elm's
| development nor trajectory. People in these comments are
| already confused.
|
| The only interesting thing about Gren on HN is HN's
| interest in Elm drama. I bet nobody here even mentions
| the language specifics but just meta discussion.
| benatkin wrote:
| It usually isn't the best way to introduce it, but if you
| value clear communication it makes sense to say that it
| is a fork of Elm if someone wonders whether or not it is
| one. Otherwise you're venturing into territory where the
| meaning of words is arbitrary and only your favorite
| words to describe something are valid.
| benatkin wrote:
| I think not, but only based on chaos theory. The author
| of Gren wouldn't be nearly as fulfilled though.
| [deleted]
| josephcsible wrote:
| Did they get rid of the whitelist of projects allowed to use
| native code (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821447,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17842400,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16510267)?
| aslilac wrote:
| Even worse, it checks the git history to make sure that...
|
| - There are no changes since HEAD
|
| - The commit is signed by Robin himself
|
| ...and for those interested in the code that does this
|
| https://github.com/gren-lang/compiler/blob/main/builder/src/...
| adamrezich wrote:
| that stuff gets run on every compile (transpile?)? yet it
| seems that any would-be forker could easily remove that
| stuff? surely this must all be an elaborate gag or something.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Permalink https://github.com/gren-
| lang/compiler/blob/e665e521367eeedec...
| ArchieMaclean wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but that code seemingly only applies
| to kernel packages, i.e. packages which are made by the gren
| team [1]
|
| Seems more like a check to make sure the version of the JS is
| compatible with the version of gren than anything else.
|
| [1] https://github.com/gren-
| lang/compiler/blob/e665e521367eeedec...
| josephcsible wrote:
| There are certain operations that only "kernel" packages
| are allowed to do. If that weren't the case, then this
| would indeed be little more than an obscure quirk.
| k__ wrote:
| lol, what did they smoke to think that's reasonable?!
| iampims wrote:
| It's their language, they can do as they wish.
| hu3 wrote:
| That doesn't make it any more reasonable.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Wild. Do you know why is that code here?
| trav4225 wrote:
| I keep clicking on Elm stories, thinking they're going to be
| about Elm the email client... :-)
| worik wrote:
| ...if only
| Conscat wrote:
| Does it support pattern matching with negative numbers?
| ecshafer wrote:
| Why is Elm getting forked?
| hu3 wrote:
| For one, it's been over 2 years without an Elm release. And
| there are many open bugs untracked in GitHub.
| https://github.com/elm/compiler/issues
|
| Unrelated to your question but for those curious, here's a
| comparison between Gren and Elm :
|
| https://gren-lang.org/book/faq.html#what-are-the-differences...
| arp242 wrote:
| One boring and banal problem I ran in to was that it will
| output text in yellow and some other colours which are hard
| to read on my white terminal background, and this is hard-
| coded and you can't disable colours (doesn't even disable
| with isatty). IIRC Evan didn't really want to fix it because
| "just use a dark background then".
|
| This is basically why I never used elm: because the compiler
| is hard to use as I struggle reading its output.
|
| (Before anyone comments "why don't you change yellow in your
| terminal": then this will break applications such as pamix
| which hard-code to a black background and use yellow text on
| that, or applications which have a black statusbar or the
| like with yellow text on it - it's not so easy to choose
| colours that work in all scenarios and all things considered
| sticking to the default set is the "least broken" since
| almost everything has an option to just disable colours).
| Kiro wrote:
| > No GLSL syntax.
|
| What does this mean? I know what GLSL is but I don't
| understand what Elm or Gren have to do with it.
| piaste wrote:
| Elm has a special syntax construct (similar to a Haskell
| quasiquote) to embed GLSL code into Elm files, and
| typechecking it as well.
|
| I imagins this is useful when writing shaders for WebGL
| apps that are written in Elm. I don't know why Gren removed
| them, though.
| aurelius83 wrote:
| I mean the last commit for Elm core was in 2021. Changes
| require sign off that doesn't seem likely from who is currently
| maintaining it. Why not fork it if you are interested in
| evolving ELM?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| So elm is abandoned or there's more to this story?
| lolinder wrote:
| You'll see people arguing that it's not, but I'll let you
| be the judge.
|
| https://elm-lang.org/news
|
| https://github.com/elm/compiler/pulse/monthly
|
| https://github.com/elm/core/pulse/monthly
|
| https://github.com/elm/compiler/commits/master
|
| https://github.com/elm/core/commits/master
| Fitzero wrote:
| Obligatory https://iselmdead.info/
| hu3 wrote:
| We need a https://seriously-iselmdead.info
| riwsky wrote:
| isiselmdead.infodead.info
| GaggiX wrote:
| I guess this site is also dead.
| afavour wrote:
| > Why is it a good thing that Elm doesn't get frequent updates?
| First of all, it means your code will last a long time!
|
| Stockholm Syndrome at work
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| Gotta love the cult of personality
| klabb3 wrote:
| Yeah sad. I appreciate the philosophy with slow careful
| releases and I also believe that people should be allowed to
| make unorthodox design choices in order to stay focused (or
| at least I'm not sure qualified to critique their choices).
| But, it seems like there's a culture of taboo/fear/fanboyism
| which is clearly not healthy.
| [deleted]
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I don't get what's unhealthy about anything on that page.
| Elm's trade offs are in plain sight. If you don't want
| them, then you have plenty of warning.
|
| Frankly Elm has more of a problem with negative fanboying:
| people who have decided it's not for them yet have to
| constantly show up to neener neener every time Elm appears
| on HN instead of just moving on.
|
| It's very weird to me as someone who uses Elm daily. We get
| it. You don't like it and everyone needs to know it.
|
| That it's some sort of cult is just HN drama begging
| fantasy.
| hu3 wrote:
| It's totally fine to run the project (or don't run) as
| the owner see fits and use it however one wants.
|
| But let's not pretend the project is actively maintained
| and there are no bugs. That's what klabb3 alludes to.
|
| Elm has this "this is fine" phenomenon where people like
| to pretend its a one-of-a-kind software that has no bugs
| doesn't even need a patch with bug fixes.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| [dead]
| lolinder wrote:
| > While the language doesn't get frequent updates (and
| that's a good thing!)
|
| This is the part that bugs me. It confuses frequent
| _changes_ with frequent _updates_.
|
| A language that changes frequently is a PITA to use, and
| it's good for a language to find a place of stability to
| where there aren't breaking changes every year. _However_
| , if I'm going to use a language in production, I expect
| it to not go 4 years without a bugfix update. It's not
| like Elm doesn't have any bugs to fix [0].
|
| I'm a PL hobbyist and don't have any problem with someone
| having a hobby language that they eventually abandon--
| I've abandoned plenty myself. I don't even have a problem
| with someone deciding that they're comfortable with the
| risk of using someone's abandoned hobby project. It's
| just weird to see people seriously trying to argue that a
| 4-year break between releases is _totally normal_ and all
| according to some master plan.
|
| [0] 290 issues and counting:
| https://github.com/elm/compiler/issues
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(page generated 2023-06-10 23:00 UTC)