"Shao, Cheng"
Hi all,
I'm thinking of adding "backend plugins" in the current Plugins mechanism which allows one to inspect/modify the IRs post simplifier pass (STG/Cmm), similar to the recently added source plugins for HsSyn IRs. This can be useful for anyone creating a custom GHC backend to target an experimental platform (e.g. the Asterius compiler which targets WebAssembly), and previously in order to retrieve those IRs from the regular pipeline, we need to use Hooks which is somewhat hacky.
Does this sound a good idea to you? If so, I can open a trac ticket and a Phab diff for this feature.
Yes, during the Implementors' Workshop this year it seemed like there was considerable interest in such a mechanism. However, as Matthew said, the devil is in the details; before starting an implementation I would recommend that you open a ticket describing the specifics of the proposed interface. It also wouldn't hurt to motivate the proposal with a discussion of the concrete use-cases that the interface is meant to address. Cheers, - Ben