
Hi everyone, I'm trying my hand at writing a GHC plugin to generate specializations for all uses of a particular typeclass, and I've run into some trouble. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction! I'm new to GHC development, so I may just be overlooking some simple stuff. The original problem: Reflex's interface is presented as a typeclass, which allows the underlying FRP engine to be selected by instance resolution. Although some programs make use of this (particularly the semantics test suite), most only ever use one implementation. However, since their code is typically written polymorphically, the implementation cannot be inlined and its rewrite rules cannot fire. This means that the typeclass My attempted solutions: * Initially, I wrote a plugin that adds INLINABLE pragmas to everything. This helped; small programs now generally see the inlining/rule-firings I was hoping for. However, in large programs, this does not occur. I'm looking into this, but also trying another approach: * Now, I am attempting to write a plugin that adds a SPECIALIZE pragma to every binding whose type mentions Reflex. The trouble: Since SPECIALIZE pragmas seem to be removed during typechecking (DsBinds.dsSpec), I can't directly add them. I would like to, perhaps, invoke Specialise.specBind; however, I'm not sure how to obtain the necessary instance - as mentioned here https://github.com/ghc/ghc/blob/c36904d66f30d4386a231ce365a056962a881767/com..., "only the type checker can conjure [dictionaries] up". Perhaps it's possible to explicitly create that dictionary somewhere and extract it for use during the plugin pass? Thanks, Ryan

I’d really like to know why INLINABLE pragmas don’t work. Perhaps an example? Only the type checker currently can conjure up dictionaries. It would presumably not be impossible to do so later, but it’d be quite a new thing, involving invoking the constraint solver. The pattern-match overlap checker does this; but without needing to generate any evidence bindings. But let’s see what’s wrong with INLINABLE first. After all if there’s a bug there, fixing it will benefit everyone. SImon From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Trinkle Sent: 28 October 2016 00:06 To: ghc-devs@haskell.org Subject: Specialization plugin Hi everyone, I'm trying my hand at writing a GHC plugin to generate specializations for all uses of a particular typeclass, and I've run into some trouble. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction! I'm new to GHC development, so I may just be overlooking some simple stuff. The original problem: Reflex's interface is presented as a typeclass, which allows the underlying FRP engine to be selected by instance resolution. Although some programs make use of this (particularly the semantics test suite), most only ever use one implementation. However, since their code is typically written polymorphically, the implementation cannot be inlined and its rewrite rules cannot fire. This means that the typeclass My attempted solutions: * Initially, I wrote a plugin that adds INLINABLE pragmas to everything. This helped; small programs now generally see the inlining/rule-firings I was hoping for. However, in large programs, this does not occur. I'm looking into this, but also trying another approach: * Now, I am attempting to write a plugin that adds a SPECIALIZE pragma to every binding whose type mentions Reflex. The trouble: Since SPECIALIZE pragmas seem to be removed during typechecking (DsBinds.dsSpec), I can't directly add them. I would like to, perhaps, invoke Specialise.specBind; however, I'm not sure how to obtain the necessary instance - as mentioned herehttps://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fghc%2Fghc%2Fblob%2Fc36904d66f30d4386a231ce365a056962a881767%2Fcompiler%2Fspecialise%2FSpecialise.hs%23L288&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4f36dab755db4a4fa6c808d3febdc2db%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636132063386504026&sdata=7RujfUJye8RbuLdOVnJTac4Wm%2B7WfLsHanWZrNhGJbA%3D&reserved=0, "only the type checker can conjure [dictionaries] up". Perhaps it's possible to explicitly create that dictionary somewhere and extract it for use during the plugin pass? Thanks, Ryan

I definitely plan to investigate the INLINABLE thing. In small programs,
it all appears to be working as expected. However, in a larger (~50
modules) client project, I think (but have not 100% confirmed) that it is
not specializing everything. The Core certainly has a good number of
Reflex dictionaries floating around (I would ideally hope that they would
all be eliminated). Perhaps there is an issue relating to INLINABLE
crossing many module or package boundaries.
I'll follow up when I have more info about exactly how that's breaking,
along with an example I can share (the current one is confidential to my
client).
On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 5:14 PM, Simon Peyton Jones
I’d really like to know why INLINABLE pragmas don’t work. Perhaps an example?
Only the type checker currently can conjure up dictionaries. It would presumably not be impossible to do so later, but it’d be quite a new thing, involving invoking the constraint solver. The pattern-match overlap checker does this; but without needing to generate any evidence bindings.
But let’s see what’s wrong with INLINABLE first. After all if there’s a bug there, fixing it will benefit everyone.
SImon
*From:* ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] *On Behalf Of *Ryan Trinkle *Sent:* 28 October 2016 00:06 *To:* ghc-devs@haskell.org *Subject:* Specialization plugin
Hi everyone,
I'm trying my hand at writing a GHC plugin to generate specializations for all uses of a particular typeclass, and I've run into some trouble. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction! I'm new to GHC development, so I may just be overlooking some simple stuff.
The original problem:
Reflex's interface is presented as a typeclass, which allows the underlying FRP engine to be selected by instance resolution. Although some programs make use of this (particularly the semantics test suite), most only ever use one implementation. However, since their code is typically written polymorphically, the implementation cannot be inlined and its rewrite rules cannot fire. This means that the typeclass
My attempted solutions:
* Initially, I wrote a plugin that adds INLINABLE pragmas to everything. This helped; small programs now generally see the inlining/rule-firings I was hoping for. However, in large programs, this does not occur. I'm looking into this, but also trying another approach:
* Now, I am attempting to write a plugin that adds a SPECIALIZE pragma to every binding whose type mentions Reflex.
The trouble:
Since SPECIALIZE pragmas seem to be removed during typechecking (DsBinds.dsSpec), I can't directly add them. I would like to, perhaps, invoke Specialise.specBind; however, I'm not sure how to obtain the necessary instance - as mentioned here https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fghc%2Fghc%2Fblob%2Fc36904d66f30d4386a231ce365a056962a881767%2Fcompiler%2Fspecialise%2FSpecialise.hs%23L288&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C4f36dab755db4a4fa6c808d3febdc2db%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636132063386504026&sdata=7RujfUJye8RbuLdOVnJTac4Wm%2B7WfLsHanWZrNhGJbA%3D&reserved=0, "only the type checker can conjure [dictionaries] up". Perhaps it's possible to explicitly create that dictionary somewhere and extract it for use during the plugin pass?
Thanks,
Ryan

I am helping Ryan investigate this.
See https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/12791 for one example
which we have identified so far.
Matt
On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 10:14 PM, Simon Peyton Jones via ghc-devs
I’d really like to know why INLINABLE pragmas don’t work. Perhaps an example?
Only the type checker currently can conjure up dictionaries. It would presumably not be impossible to do so later, but it’d be quite a new thing, involving invoking the constraint solver. The pattern-match overlap checker does this; but without needing to generate any evidence bindings.
But let’s see what’s wrong with INLINABLE first. After all if there’s a bug there, fixing it will benefit everyone.
SImon
From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Trinkle Sent: 28 October 2016 00:06 To: ghc-devs@haskell.org Subject: Specialization plugin
Hi everyone,
I'm trying my hand at writing a GHC plugin to generate specializations for all uses of a particular typeclass, and I've run into some trouble. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction! I'm new to GHC development, so I may just be overlooking some simple stuff.
The original problem:
Reflex's interface is presented as a typeclass, which allows the underlying FRP engine to be selected by instance resolution. Although some programs make use of this (particularly the semantics test suite), most only ever use one implementation. However, since their code is typically written polymorphically, the implementation cannot be inlined and its rewrite rules cannot fire. This means that the typeclass
My attempted solutions:
* Initially, I wrote a plugin that adds INLINABLE pragmas to everything. This helped; small programs now generally see the inlining/rule-firings I was hoping for. However, in large programs, this does not occur. I'm looking into this, but also trying another approach:
* Now, I am attempting to write a plugin that adds a SPECIALIZE pragma to every binding whose type mentions Reflex.
The trouble:
Since SPECIALIZE pragmas seem to be removed during typechecking (DsBinds.dsSpec), I can't directly add them. I would like to, perhaps, invoke Specialise.specBind; however, I'm not sure how to obtain the necessary instance - as mentioned here, "only the type checker can conjure [dictionaries] up". Perhaps it's possible to explicitly create that dictionary somewhere and extract it for use during the plugin pass?
Thanks,
Ryan
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One small question: what's the difference between adding INLINABLE
everywhere, and just compiling with -fexpose-all-unfoldings,
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/using-optimi...
Is there any reason you couldn't use that flag as opposed to writing a
plugin that adds INLINEABLE pragmas to all bindings?
On 28 October 2016 at 00:05, Ryan Trinkle
Hi everyone,
I'm trying my hand at writing a GHC plugin to generate specializations for all uses of a particular typeclass, and I've run into some trouble. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction! I'm new to GHC development, so I may just be overlooking some simple stuff.
The original problem: Reflex's interface is presented as a typeclass, which allows the underlying FRP engine to be selected by instance resolution. Although some programs make use of this (particularly the semantics test suite), most only ever use one implementation. However, since their code is typically written polymorphically, the implementation cannot be inlined and its rewrite rules cannot fire. This means that the typeclass
My attempted solutions: * Initially, I wrote a plugin that adds INLINABLE pragmas to everything. This helped; small programs now generally see the inlining/rule-firings I was hoping for. However, in large programs, this does not occur. I'm looking into this, but also trying another approach: * Now, I am attempting to write a plugin that adds a SPECIALIZE pragma to every binding whose type mentions Reflex.
The trouble: Since SPECIALIZE pragmas seem to be removed during typechecking (DsBinds.dsSpec), I can't directly add them. I would like to, perhaps, invoke Specialise.specBind; however, I'm not sure how to obtain the necessary instance - as mentioned here https://github.com/ghc/ghc/blob/c36904d66f30d4386a231ce365a056962a881767/com..., "only the type checker can conjure [dictionaries] up". Perhaps it's possible to explicitly create that dictionary somewhere and extract it for use during the plugin pass?
Thanks, Ryan
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My understanding was that they ought to be the same. However, that didn't seem to be the case. In my small example, where the plugin did work, -fexpose-all-unfoldings did not. On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 8:23 AM, Christiaan Baaij < christiaan.baaij@gmail.com> wrote:
One small question: what's the difference between adding INLINABLE everywhere, and just compiling with -fexpose-all-unfoldings, https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_ guide/using-optimisation.html#ghc-flag--fexpose-all-unfoldings? Is there any reason you couldn't use that flag as opposed to writing a plugin that adds INLINEABLE pragmas to all bindings?
On 28 October 2016 at 00:05, Ryan Trinkle
wrote: Hi everyone,
I'm trying my hand at writing a GHC plugin to generate specializations for all uses of a particular typeclass, and I've run into some trouble. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction! I'm new to GHC development, so I may just be overlooking some simple stuff.
The original problem: Reflex's interface is presented as a typeclass, which allows the underlying FRP engine to be selected by instance resolution. Although some programs make use of this (particularly the semantics test suite), most only ever use one implementation. However, since their code is typically written polymorphically, the implementation cannot be inlined and its rewrite rules cannot fire. This means that the typeclass
My attempted solutions: * Initially, I wrote a plugin that adds INLINABLE pragmas to everything. This helped; small programs now generally see the inlining/rule-firings I was hoping for. However, in large programs, this does not occur. I'm looking into this, but also trying another approach: * Now, I am attempting to write a plugin that adds a SPECIALIZE pragma to every binding whose type mentions Reflex.
The trouble: Since SPECIALIZE pragmas seem to be removed during typechecking (DsBinds.dsSpec), I can't directly add them. I would like to, perhaps, invoke Specialise.specBind; however, I'm not sure how to obtain the necessary instance - as mentioned here https://github.com/ghc/ghc/blob/c36904d66f30d4386a231ce365a056962a881767/com..., "only the type checker can conjure [dictionaries] up". Perhaps it's possible to explicitly create that dictionary somewhere and extract it for use during the plugin pass?
Thanks, Ryan
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participants (4)
-
Christiaan Baaij
-
Matthew Pickering
-
Ryan Trinkle
-
Simon Peyton Jones