Re: Generating fresh names in a source plugin

Ugh. I realise that you were talking about *source* plugins, which work in the Hsc monad, which indeed has no obvious way to generate uniques. I have created https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/26264 to document my learning journey. Simon On Mon, 4 Aug 2025 at 11:44, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

What about calling this function?

GHC.Tc.Plugin.newUnique :: TcPluginM Unique

The module GHC.Tc.Plugin provides facilities to plugins.

More generally, here is the manual page for plugins https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/extending_ghc.html#compil.... Is it adequate?

I notice that

- it mentions the module GHC.Plugins (but only in code fragments) - it does not mention GHC.Tc.Plugins; neither does GHC.Plugins re-export GHC.Tc.Plugins

It would be great if some plugin authors felt able to offer patches to improve. Maybe open a GHC ticket?

Simon

On Sat, 2 Aug 2025 at 14:16, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:

...

[Since it seems that `glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org` is essentially an announcements-only mailing list these days, I’m re-sending my recent e-mail to that mailing list here.]

Hello!

I want to generate AST fragments in a source plugin, and for this I need to generate fresh (local) names. My current approach is to use `mkSystemName`, but it, like many of the other name-generating operations, needs a value of type `Unique`. How can I generate such values? It seems that the `Hsc` monad doesn’t carry a value of type `UniqueSupply` with it.

All the best, Wolfgang _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs