Not suggesting we actually switch, but there is one strong 'why': You can't
link Haskell code with any library that uses GMP internally internally
without switching to using integer-simple. I've been trying with very
limited success to get good MPFR bindings for Haskell for ~3 years now as a
result.
The most likely fix actually involves changes to MPFR as their constant
cache and our garbage collector don't play nice.
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 7:36 PM, Edward Z. Yang
Hey Gergeley,
(obviously we would have to call mpz_free here and there, but that seems doable).
Actually, this is precisely the problem. When is a GMP integer freed? It can have pointers to it from objects on the heap, so this free should only occur when the integer is dead, with no references from the heap. How can that be arranged? Well, the garbage collector is responsible for figuring this out. So why shouldn't they just live on the heap, and then smoothly integrate with the existing garbage collector.
The alternate strategy is to arrange that some sort of "callback" gets invoked when an object dies. You can achieve this using our finalizer support, but you pay an efficiency penalty and cannot guarantee that the integers will get freed in a timely manner at all.
More concretely: openssl BN uses the openssl_malloc function can only be overridden openssl wide. But if we link statically, than this override won't affect external openssl library bindings, because the openssl symbols in our object files won't even be exported, right?
Only if literally two copies of OpenSSL are linked. This seems unlikely to work the way you want it to.
Cheers, Edward _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs