On Fri, Jan 03, 2014 at 10:19:02AM +0000, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
| Is this with a statically linked or dynamically linked GHC?
I don't know. How would I find out? (It's the one built by validate.)
You are asking about GHC, but I guess there's also the question of whether the test program itself is statically or dynamically linked.
Oh, yes, sorry, I was thinking this was in ghci for some reason. You're right that it's the test program we need to know about.
Why would static/dynamic linking make a difference? That's very confusing!
With dynamic linking, there will be one shared copy of base, and in particular one shared stdout buffer. The runtime will flush that buffer when the program exits. With static linking, you'll be loading a second copy of base in which the statement is evalauted, and that base will have a separate stdout buffer. GHCi flushes this when appropriate by calling flushInterpBuffers. Thanks Ian