What is the Haskell standard library?

Question

Can the GHC-specific libraries be called the standard library? Or do only those in the Haskell 2010 report count?

Many of the GHC libraries can be implemented by the functions in the Haskell report, possibly combined with C bindings. But the others are reliant on GHC-specific extensions, since the current Haskell language as defined in the language report doesn't support it.

For example, can Data.Array.IO be implemented in pure standard Haskell?

Is it really okay to think that GHC is Haskell?

Answer 1

Unfortunately the Haskell community doesn't have a real consensus about what's the "standard" library.

• The report libraries are too limited for many uses.
• The GHC libraries are mainly defined by what GHC itself needs.
• The Haskell Platform was an attempt to define one but many don't like to depend on it.
• Stackage and especially Hackage are too huge.