6. Single Code Base & Integration

In our opinion, a big advantage of our approach is to have an integrated framework whose source is in a single code base. It makes it much easier to evolve at a fast pace without having to maintain interface compatibility between its internal components. Moreover, refactoring is usually safe and relatively easy in Haskell, so we could later split it into several parts if needed.

Note

As a comparison point, usual Linux distributions use several system services and core libraries, most of them in their own repository and independently developed: libc, dbus, udev, libdrm, libinput, Mesa/X11/Wayland, PulseAudio, etc. It is worth noting that the issue has been identified and that an effort has been recently made to reduce the fragmentation and to centralize some of them into a more integrated and coherent framework: systemd.

Having a single codebase written with a high-level language makes it easier to find documentation, to understand how things work (especially the interaction between the different components) and to make contributions.