[Pkg-haskell-maintainers] Bug#533022: ghc6: Data.Word should define instances of Random for each type

[Josh Triplett]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 09:15:26PM +0200, Joachim Breitner wrote:
> Hi Josh,
> 
> Am Samstag, den 13.06.2009, 12:39 -0700 schrieb Josh Triplett:
> > Package: ghc6
> > Version: 6.10.3-2
> > Severity: wishlist
> > Tags: upstream
> > 
> > Data.Word defines signed and unsigned integer types for various bit
> > sizes.  It would help if Data.Word made each type an instance of Random.
> > Per <http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Orphan_instance>, such an
> > instance should appear either in System.Random or Data.Word, and it
> > makes more sense to do the latter.
> 
> upstream says in http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3352 that if
> you want to have this feature, you should go through the process
> outlined in http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions. Are
> you interested in doing that?

Actually, it appears that this bug already got fixed in the upstream
repository for System.Random:

Fri Oct  8 06:52:39 PDT 2010  Bas van Dijk <v.dijk.bas at gmail.com>
  * Added Random instances for Int*, Word* and almost all types from Foreign.C.Types

However, this fix (and many other changes) has not yet appeared in a
version of random on Hackage or in the standard library.  So, it appears
that random just needs a new upstream release.

- Josh Triplett