Simple is good. But what is this dead simple idea?

I'm referring to David's first e-mail on this thread: https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/2018-September/016191.html All that would take is putting Coercion in TysWiredIn, and moving Coercion from Data.Type.Coercion to somewhere in ghc-prim.

Maybe this thread belongs with the proposal, unless I’m misunderstanding.

I think the intention is to have that proposal (which proposes a language change) be superseded by this idea (which does not change the language). Ryan S. On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 10:20 AM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

Simple is good. But what is this dead simple idea?

Perhaps: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/116

But that proposal lists several possible alternatives. Which one did you mean?

And all of them are language changes. Making evidence strict would require no language changes to solve the original problem.

Maybe this thread belongs with the proposal, unless I’m misunderstanding.

Simon

*From:* ghc-devs *On Behalf Of *Ryan Scott *Sent:* 05 September 2018 15:15 *To:* ghc-devs@haskell.org *Subject:* Re: Unpacking coercions

These aren't mutually exclusive ideas. While I'm sure there's many ways we could solve this problem, David's idea has the distinct advantage of being dead simple. I'd rather not block his vision on some other large refactor that may never materialize. (And if it _does_ materialize, we could revert any wiring-in of Coercible quite easily.)

Ryan S.

We could utterly lie and say

data Coercion a b where

Coercion :: Coercion a a

That would generate the right bits in in the .o file, and we’d totally ignore the .hi file. Gruesome but I think it would work.

But rather than all this circumlocution, why don’t we just make it

This was precisely what I had in mind. We already perform this trick for several things defined in ghc-prim (e.g., the (~) and (~~) classes), so this would just be another example of that. possible to write ~# and ~R# directly. Even if we dodge the need right now, it’ll surely come back. Hah, the reason David is suggesting his idea in the first place is to avoid having to do this! My understanding is that making it possible to write (~#) and (~R#) directly would involve quite a number of complications, as Richard's wiki entry on the subject [1] demonstrates. That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see that happen some day. But a mere mortal like myself couldn't possibly implement this, whereas David's idea is actually within reach. Ryan S. ----- [1] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/DependentHaskell/Internal#Liftedvs.Unl... On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 10:45 AM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

I think the intention is to have that proposal (which proposes a language change) be superseded by this idea (which does not change the language).

Oh, I did not know that. I’ll ignore the proposal for now, in that case.

All that would take is putting Coercion in TysWiredIn, and moving Coercion from Data.Type.Coercion to somewhere in ghc-prim.

I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that. Yes, we can wire it into the compiler; but we still need a module that defines the info table, curried data constructor etc for the type. And we have no way to do that.

We could utterly lie and say

data Coercion a b where

Coercion :: Coercion a a

That would generate the right bits in in the .o file, and we’d totally ignore the .hi file. Gruesome but I think it would work.

But rather than all this circumlocution, why don’t we just make it possible to write ~# and ~R# directly. Even if we dodge the need right now, it’ll surely come back.

If that is lexically tiresome, we could I suppose provide builtin-aliases for them, as if we had

type NomEq# = (~#)

type ReprEq# = (~R#)

Simon

*From:* Ryan Scott *Sent:* 05 September 2018 15:26 *To:* Simon Peyton Jones *Cc:* ghc-devs@haskell.org *Subject:* Re: Unpacking coercions

...

Simple is good. But what is this dead simple idea?

I'm referring to David's first e-mail on this thread: https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/2018-September/016191.html

All that would take is putting Coercion in TysWiredIn, and moving Coercion from Data.Type.Coercion to somewhere in ghc-prim.

...

Maybe this thread belongs with the proposal, unless I’m misunderstanding.

I think the intention is to have that proposal (which proposes a language change) be superseded by this idea (which does not change the language).

Ryan S.

On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 10:20 AM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

Simple is good. But what is this dead simple idea?

Perhaps: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/116 https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fghc-proposals%2Fghc-proposals%2Fpull%2F116&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7Cab6e886b24b548eab26608d6133b91b5%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636717543898919689&sdata=XKBwJiLM%2FcH5FeRLuodH3SKXQUppYT0QYDojH4fO7Tg%3D&reserved=0

But that proposal lists several possible alternatives. Which one did you mean?

And all of them are language changes. Making evidence strict would require no language changes to solve the original problem.

Maybe this thread belongs with the proposal, unless I’m misunderstanding.

Simon

*From:* ghc-devs *On Behalf Of *Ryan Scott *Sent:* 05 September 2018 15:15 *To:* ghc-devs@haskell.org *Subject:* Re: Unpacking coercions

These aren't mutually exclusive ideas. While I'm sure there's many ways we could solve this problem, David's idea has the distinct advantage of being dead simple. I'd rather not block his vision on some other large refactor that may never materialize. (And if it _does_ materialize, we could revert any wiring-in of Coercible quite easily.)

Ryan S.

OK – a good thread. From it I have learned * What the goal is * That exposing (~#) and (~R#) is not just lexically tricky; it’s deeper than that (Richard’s note below). * That there is a viable, implementation plan; not a thing of beauty perhaps, but ok if carefully documented Sounds good to me! My suggestion, if someone is motivated enough to pursue this: * write a wiki page to summarise the above points * plus a ticket to track progress * implement the design Happy to help review. Sorry to have been slow to understand. Simon From: Richard Eisenberg Sent: 05 September 2018 16:26 To: Ryan Scott Cc: Simon Peyton Jones ; ghc-devs@haskell.org Subject: Re: Unpacking coercions I don't think that wiki reference is really about this problem. Instead, I think that we'd need Constraint# to be able to offer users ~# and ~R#. The problem, then, is that there is no answer to this question: Constraint is to Type as Constraint# is to what? Currently, if ~# and ~R# are the only two generators of Constraint#, then Constraint# is like TYPE (TupleRep '[]). But I think wiring that in would be short-sighted. Instead, this road leads to CONSTRAINT :: RuntimeRep -> Type, which is like TYPE. Today's Constraint would be CONSTRAINT LiftedRep. And we would have (~#), (~R#) :: forall k1 k2. k1 -> k2 -> CONSTRAINT (TupleRep '[]). In the Glorious Future, we'll have CONSTRAINT ~R TYPE, but we're not there yet. This all feel like the Right Answer to me, but it's unclear if we should start down this road before we have roles in kinds. Richard On Sep 5, 2018, at 10:54 AM, Ryan Scott mailto:ryan.gl.scott@gmail.com> wrote:

We could utterly lie and say

data Coercion a b where

Coercion :: Coercion a a

That would generate the right bits in in the .o file, and we’d totally ignore the .hi file. Gruesome but I think it would work.

This was precisely what I had in mind. We already perform this trick for several things defined in ghc-prim (e.g., the (~) and (~~) classes), so this would just be another example of that.

But rather than all this circumlocution, why don’t we just make it possible to write ~# and ~R# directly. Even if we dodge the need right now, it’ll surely come back.

Hah, the reason David is suggesting his idea in the first place is to avoid having to do this! My understanding is that making it possible to write (~#) and (~R#) directly would involve quite a number of complications, as Richard's wiki entry on the subject [1] demonstrates. That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see that happen some day. But a mere mortal like myself couldn't possibly implement this, whereas David's idea is actually within reach. Ryan S. ----- [1] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/DependentHaskell/Internal#Liftedvs.Unl... On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 10:45 AM, Simon Peyton Jones mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote: I think the intention is to have that proposal (which proposes a language change) be superseded by this idea (which does not change the language). Oh, I did not know that. I’ll ignore the proposal for now, in that case. All that would take is putting Coercion in TysWiredIn, and moving Coercion from Data.Type.Coercion to somewhere in ghc-prim. I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that. Yes, we can wire it into the compiler; but we still need a module that defines the info table, curried data constructor etc for the type. And we have no way to do that. We could utterly lie and say data Coercion a b where Coercion :: Coercion a a That would generate the right bits in in the .o file, and we’d totally ignore the .hi file. Gruesome but I think it would work. But rather than all this circumlocution, why don’t we just make it possible to write ~# and ~R# directly. Even if we dodge the need right now, it’ll surely come back. If that is lexically tiresome, we could I suppose provide builtin-aliases for them, as if we had type NomEq# = (~#) type ReprEq# = (~R#) Simon From: Ryan Scott mailto:ryan.gl.scott@gmail.com> Sent: 05 September 2018 15:26 To: Simon Peyton Jones mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com> Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.orgmailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org Subject: Re: Unpacking coercions

Simple is good. But what is this dead simple idea?

I'm referring to David's first e-mail on this thread: https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/2018-September/016191.html All that would take is putting Coercion in TysWiredIn, and moving Coercion from Data.Type.Coercion to somewhere in ghc-prim.

Maybe this thread belongs with the proposal, unless I’m misunderstanding.

I think the intention is to have that proposal (which proposes a language change) be superseded by this idea (which does not change the language). Ryan S. On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 10:20 AM, Simon Peyton Jones mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote: Simple is good. But what is this dead simple idea? Perhaps: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/116https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fghc-proposals%2Fghc-proposals%2Fpull%2F116&data=02%7C01%7Csimonpj%40microsoft.com%7C51cff02dc13341258db108d61343d184%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C636717579340406159&sdata=1VQIATP4YeqvffmUsqIE6m5aDOe55nlf4NE6WOqWZ%2BU%3D&reserved=0 But that proposal lists several possible alternatives. Which one did you mean? And all of them are language changes. Making evidence strict would require no language changes to solve the original problem. Maybe this thread belongs with the proposal, unless I’m misunderstanding. Simon From: ghc-devs mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org> On Behalf Of Ryan Scott Sent: 05 September 2018 15:15 To: ghc-devs@haskell.orgmailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org Subject: Re: Unpacking coercions These aren't mutually exclusive ideas. While I'm sure there's many ways we could solve this problem, David's idea has the distinct advantage of being dead simple. I'd rather not block his vision on some other large refactor that may never materialize. (And if it _does_ materialize, we could revert any wiring-in of Coercible quite easily.) Ryan S. _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.orgmailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs