I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), which would avoid the noise? Maybe. What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in this regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions nicely. Richard On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" wrote:

Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 -0700:

...

1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update the HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all the rest?

I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I think this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we shouldn't add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a dynamically typed map for annotations.)

Edward _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

I'm anxious about it being too big a change too. I'd be up for it if we had several "customers" all saying "yes, this is precisely what we need to make our usage of the GHC API far far easier". With enough detail so we can understand their use-case. Otherwise I worry that we might go to a lot of effort to solve the wrong problem; or to build a solution that does not, in the end, work for the actual use-case. Another way to tackle this would be to ensure that syntax tree nodes have a "node-key" (a bit like their source location) that clients could use in a finite map, to map node-key to values of their choice. I have not reviewed your patch in detail, but it's uncomfortable that the 'l' parameter gets into IfGblEnv and DsM. That doesn't smell right. Ditto DynFlags/HscEnv, though I think here that you are right that the "hooks" interface is very crucial. After all, the WHOLE POINT is too make the client interface more flexible. I would consult Luite and Edsko, who were instrumental in designing the new hooks interface https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Ghc/Hooks (I'm not sure if that page is up to date, but I hope so) A good way to proceed might be to identify some of the big users of the GHC API (I'm sure I don't know them all), discuss with them what would help them, and share the results on a wiki page. Simon | -----Original Message----- | From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Richard Eisenberg | Sent: 30 September 2014 03:04 | To: Edward Z. Yang | Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations | | I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: | I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a | big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also | really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile | to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), | which would avoid the noise? Maybe. | | What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get | such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a | chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is | that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to | have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, | unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in this | regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond | indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions | nicely. | | Richard | | On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" wrote: | | > Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 | -0700: | >> 1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update | the | >> HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all | >> the rest? | > | > I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I | think | > this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we | shouldn't | > add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack | > can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a | dynamically | > typed map for annotations.) | > | > Edward | > _______________________________________________ | > ghc-devs mailing list | > ghc-devs@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs | | _______________________________________________ | ghc-devs mailing list | ghc-devs@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

On further reflection of the goals for the annotation, I would like to put forward the following proposal for comment Instead of physically placing a "node-key" in each AST Node, a virtual node key can be generated from any `GenLocated SrcSpan e' comprising a combination of the `SrcSpan` value and a unique identifier from the constructor for `e`, perhaps using its `TypeRep`, since the entire AST derives Typeable. To further reduce the intrusiveness, a base Annotation type can be defined that captures the location of noise tokens for each AST constructor. This can then be emitted from the parser, if the appropriate flag is set to enable it. So data ApiAnnKey = AK SrcSpan TypeRep mkApiAnnKey :: (Located e) -> ApiAnnKey mkApiAnnKey = ... data Ann = .... | AnnHsLet SrcSpan -- of the word "let" SrcSpan -- of the word "in" | AnnHsDo SrcSpan -- of the word "do" And then in the parser | 'let' binds 'in' exp { mkAnnHsLet $1 $3 (LL $ HsLet (unLoc $2) $4) } The helper is mkAnnHsLet :: Located a -> Located b -> LHsExpr RdrName -> P (LHsExpr RdrName) mkAnnHsLet (L l_let _) (L l_in _) e = do addAnnotation (mkAnnKey e) (AnnHsLet l_let l_in) return e; The Parse Monad would have to accumulate the annotations to be returned at the end, if called with the appropriate flag. There will be some boilerplate in getting the annotations and helper functions defined, but it will not pollute the rest. This technique can also potentially be backported to support older GHC versions via a modification to ghc-parser. https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc-parser Regards Alan On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Alan & Kim Zimmerman wrote:

I tend to agree that this change is much too intrusive for what it attempts to do.

I think the concept of a node key could be workable, and ties in to the approach I am taking in ghc-exactprint [1], which uses a SrcSpan together with node type as the annotation key.

[1] https://github.com/alanz/ghc-exactprint

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Simon Peyton Jones < simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote:

...

I'm anxious about it being too big a change too.

I'd be up for it if we had several "customers" all saying "yes, this is precisely what we need to make our usage of the GHC API far far easier". With enough detail so we can understand their use-case.

Otherwise I worry that we might go to a lot of effort to solve the wrong problem; or to build a solution that does not, in the end, work for the actual use-case.

Another way to tackle this would be to ensure that syntax tree nodes have a "node-key" (a bit like their source location) that clients could use in a finite map, to map node-key to values of their choice.

I have not reviewed your patch in detail, but it's uncomfortable that the 'l' parameter gets into IfGblEnv and DsM. That doesn't smell right.

Ditto DynFlags/HscEnv, though I think here that you are right that the "hooks" interface is very crucial. After all, the WHOLE POINT is too make the client interface more flexible. I would consult Luite and Edsko, who were instrumental in designing the new hooks interface https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Ghc/Hooks (I'm not sure if that page is up to date, but I hope so)

A good way to proceed might be to identify some of the big users of the GHC API (I'm sure I don't know them all), discuss with them what would help them, and share the results on a wiki page.

Simon

| -----Original Message----- | From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Richard Eisenberg | Sent: 30 September 2014 03:04 | To: Edward Z. Yang | Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations | | I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: | I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a | big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also | really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile | to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), | which would avoid the noise? Maybe. | | What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get | such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a | chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is | that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to | have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, | unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in this | regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond | indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions | nicely. | | Richard | | On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" wrote: | | > Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 | -0700: | >> 1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update | the | >> HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all | >> the rest? | > | > I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I | think | > this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we | shouldn't | > add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack | > can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a | dynamically | > typed map for annotations.) | > | > Edward | > _______________________________________________ | > ghc-devs mailing list | > ghc-devs@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs | | _______________________________________________ | ghc-devs mailing list | ghc-devs@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

I was getting a bit lost between the idea and the implementation. Let me try rephrasing the idea in my own words. The goal: Capture inner source spans in AST syntax nodes. At the moment if ... then ... else ... captures the spans [if [...] then [...] else [...]]. We want to capture the spans for each keyword as well, so: [{if} [...] {then} [...] {else} [...]]. The proposal: Rather than add anything to the AST, have a separate mapping (SrcSpan,AstCtor) to [SrcSpan]. So you give in the SrcSpan from the IfThenElse node, and some token for the IfThenElse constructor, and get back a list of IfThenElse for the particular keyword. I like the proposal because it adds nothing inside the AST, and requires no fresh invariants of the AST. I dislike it because the contents of that separate mapping are highly tied up with the AST, and easy to get out of sync. I think it's the right choice for three reasons, 1) it is easier to try out and doesn't break the AST, so we have more scope for changing our minds later; 2) the same technique is able to represent things other than SrcSpan without introducing a polymorphic src span; 3) the people who pay the complexity are the people who use it, which is relatively few people. That said, as a tweak to the API, rather than a single data type for all annotations, you could have: data AnnIfThenElse = AnnIfThenElse {posIf, posThen, posElse :: SrcSpan} data AnnDo = AnnDo {posDo :: SrcSpan} Then you could just have an opaque Map (SrcSpan, TypeRep) Dynamic, with the invariant that the TypeRep in the key matches the Dynamic. Then you can have: getAnnotation :: Typeable a => Annotations -> SrcSpan -> Maybe a. I think it simplifies some of the TypeRep trickery you are engaging in with mkAnnKey. Thanks, Neil On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 5:06 PM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

Let me urge you, once more, to consult some actual heavy-duty users of these proposed facilities. I am very keen to avoid investing design and implementation effort in facilities that may not meet the need.

If they end up acclaiming the node-key idea, then we should surely simply make the key an abstract type, simply an instance of Hashable, Ord, etc.

Simon

From: Alan & Kim Zimmerman [mailto:alan.zimm@gmail.com] Sent: 30 September 2014 19:48 To: Simon Peyton Jones Cc: Richard Eisenberg; Edward Z. Yang; ghc-devs@haskell.org

Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations

On further reflection of the goals for the annotation, I would like to put forward the following proposal for comment

Instead of physically placing a "node-key" in each AST Node, a virtual node key can be generated from any `GenLocated SrcSpan e' comprising a combination of the `SrcSpan` value and a unique identifier from the constructor for `e`, perhaps using its `TypeRep`, since the entire AST derives Typeable.

To further reduce the intrusiveness, a base Annotation type can be defined that captures the location of noise tokens for each AST constructor. This can then be emitted from the parser, if the appropriate flag is set to enable it.

So

data ApiAnnKey = AK SrcSpan TypeRep

mkApiAnnKey :: (Located e) -> ApiAnnKey mkApiAnnKey = ...

data Ann = .... | AnnHsLet SrcSpan -- of the word "let" SrcSpan -- of the word "in"

| AnnHsDo SrcSpan -- of the word "do"

And then in the parser

| 'let' binds 'in' exp { mkAnnHsLet $1 $3 (LL $ HsLet (unLoc $2) $4) }

The helper is

mkAnnHsLet :: Located a -> Located b -> LHsExpr RdrName -> P (LHsExpr RdrName) mkAnnHsLet (L l_let _) (L l_in _) e = do addAnnotation (mkAnnKey e) (AnnHsLet l_let l_in) return e;

The Parse Monad would have to accumulate the annotations to be returned at the end, if called with the appropriate flag.

There will be some boilerplate in getting the annotations and helper functions defined, but it will not pollute the rest.

This technique can also potentially be backported to support older GHC versions via a modification to ghc-parser.

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc-parser

Regards

Alan

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Alan & Kim Zimmerman wrote:

I tend to agree that this change is much too intrusive for what it attempts to do.

I think the concept of a node key could be workable, and ties in to the approach I am taking in ghc-exactprint [1], which uses a SrcSpan together with node type as the annotation key.

[1] https://github.com/alanz/ghc-exactprint

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

I'm anxious about it being too big a change too.

I'd be up for it if we had several "customers" all saying "yes, this is precisely what we need to make our usage of the GHC API far far easier". With enough detail so we can understand their use-case.

Otherwise I worry that we might go to a lot of effort to solve the wrong problem; or to build a solution that does not, in the end, work for the actual use-case.

Another way to tackle this would be to ensure that syntax tree nodes have a "node-key" (a bit like their source location) that clients could use in a finite map, to map node-key to values of their choice.

I have not reviewed your patch in detail, but it's uncomfortable that the 'l' parameter gets into IfGblEnv and DsM. That doesn't smell right.

Ditto DynFlags/HscEnv, though I think here that you are right that the "hooks" interface is very crucial. After all, the WHOLE POINT is too make the client interface more flexible. I would consult Luite and Edsko, who were instrumental in designing the new hooks interface https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Ghc/Hooks (I'm not sure if that page is up to date, but I hope so)

A good way to proceed might be to identify some of the big users of the GHC API (I'm sure I don't know them all), discuss with them what would help them, and share the results on a wiki page.

Simon

| -----Original Message----- | From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Richard Eisenberg | Sent: 30 September 2014 03:04 | To: Edward Z. Yang | Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations | | I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: | I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a | big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also | really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile | to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), | which would avoid the noise? Maybe. | | What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get | such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a | chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is | that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to | have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, | unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in this | regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond | indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions | nicely. | | Richard | | On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" wrote: | | > Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 | -0700: | >> 1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update | the | >> HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all | >> the rest? | > | > I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I | think | > this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we | shouldn't | > add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack | > can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a | dynamically | > typed map for annotations.) | > | > Edward | > _______________________________________________ | > ghc-devs mailing list | > ghc-devs@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs | | _______________________________________________ | ghc-devs mailing list | ghc-devs@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

_______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

Neil I looked into your proposed change in more detail, and I think it is flawed because it is trying to map the annotation back to itself. To start with we have a SrcSpan and the concrete AST value. We need to map the concrete constructor to the relevant annotation, which is of a different type. One straightforward way of doing it is the following data ApiAnnKey = AK SrcSpan String deriving (Eq,Ord,Show) getAnnotation :: Data a => Map.Map ApiAnnKey ApiAnn -> Located a -> Maybe ApiAnn getAnnotation anns a = Map.lookup (mkApiAnnKey a) anns mkApiAnnKey :: (Data e) => (Located e) -> ApiAnnKey mkApiAnnKey (L l e) = AK l (gconname e) gconname :: Data a => a -> String gconname = (\t -> showConstr . toConstr $ t) Note that showConstr is just an alias to the record selector for the Data.Data.Constr, so it is fast and returns a constant string. In this scenario I am not sure that there is a benefit to splitting the ApiAnn type into multiple separate ones. Also, it only relies on the AST being an instance of Data, which already holds. On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Neil Mitchell wrote:

I was getting a bit lost between the idea and the implementation. Let me try rephrasing the idea in my own words.

The goal: Capture inner source spans in AST syntax nodes. At the moment if ... then ... else ... captures the spans [if [...] then [...] else [...]]. We want to capture the spans for each keyword as well, so: [{if} [...] {then} [...] {else} [...]].

The proposal: Rather than add anything to the AST, have a separate mapping (SrcSpan,AstCtor) to [SrcSpan]. So you give in the SrcSpan from the IfThenElse node, and some token for the IfThenElse constructor, and get back a list of IfThenElse for the particular keyword.

I like the proposal because it adds nothing inside the AST, and requires no fresh invariants of the AST. I dislike it because the contents of that separate mapping are highly tied up with the AST, and easy to get out of sync. I think it's the right choice for three reasons, 1) it is easier to try out and doesn't break the AST, so we have more scope for changing our minds later; 2) the same technique is able to represent things other than SrcSpan without introducing a polymorphic src span; 3) the people who pay the complexity are the people who use it, which is relatively few people.

That said, as a tweak to the API, rather than a single data type for all annotations, you could have:

data AnnIfThenElse = AnnIfThenElse {posIf, posThen, posElse :: SrcSpan} data AnnDo = AnnDo {posDo :: SrcSpan}

Then you could just have an opaque Map (SrcSpan, TypeRep) Dynamic, with the invariant that the TypeRep in the key matches the Dynamic. Then you can have: getAnnotation :: Typeable a => Annotations -> SrcSpan -> Maybe a. I think it simplifies some of the TypeRep trickery you are engaging in with mkAnnKey.

Thanks, Neil

...

Let me urge you, once more, to consult some actual heavy-duty users of

...

proposed facilities. I am very keen to avoid investing design and implementation effort in facilities that may not meet the need.

If they end up acclaiming the node-key idea, then we should surely simply make the key an abstract type, simply an instance of Hashable, Ord, etc.

Simon

From: Alan & Kim Zimmerman [mailto:alan.zimm@gmail.com] Sent: 30 September 2014 19:48 To: Simon Peyton Jones Cc: Richard Eisenberg; Edward Z. Yang; ghc-devs@haskell.org

Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations

On further reflection of the goals for the annotation, I would like to

On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 5:06 PM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote: these put

...

forward the following proposal for comment

Instead of physically placing a "node-key" in each AST Node, a virtual node key can be generated from any `GenLocated SrcSpan e' comprising a combination of the `SrcSpan` value and a unique identifier from the constructor for `e`, perhaps using its `TypeRep`, since the entire AST derives Typeable.

To further reduce the intrusiveness, a base Annotation type can be defined that captures the location of noise tokens for each AST constructor. This can then be emitted from the parser, if the appropriate flag is set to enable it.

So

data ApiAnnKey = AK SrcSpan TypeRep

mkApiAnnKey :: (Located e) -> ApiAnnKey mkApiAnnKey = ...

data Ann = .... | AnnHsLet SrcSpan -- of the word "let" SrcSpan -- of the word "in"

| AnnHsDo SrcSpan -- of the word "do"

And then in the parser

| 'let' binds 'in' exp { mkAnnHsLet $1 $3 (LL $ HsLet (unLoc $2) $4) }

The helper is

mkAnnHsLet :: Located a -> Located b -> LHsExpr RdrName -> P (LHsExpr RdrName) mkAnnHsLet (L l_let _) (L l_in _) e = do addAnnotation (mkAnnKey e) (AnnHsLet l_let l_in) return e;

The Parse Monad would have to accumulate the annotations to be returned at the end, if called with the appropriate flag.

There will be some boilerplate in getting the annotations and helper functions defined, but it will not pollute the rest.

This technique can also potentially be backported to support older GHC versions via a modification to ghc-parser.

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc-parser

Regards

Alan

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Alan & Kim Zimmerman < alan.zimm@gmail.com> wrote:

I tend to agree that this change is much too intrusive for what it attempts to do.

I think the concept of a node key could be workable, and ties in to the approach I am taking in ghc-exactprint [1], which uses a SrcSpan together with node type as the annotation key.

[1] https://github.com/alanz/ghc-exactprint

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Simon Peyton Jones < simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote:

I'm anxious about it being too big a change too.

I'd be up for it if we had several "customers" all saying "yes, this is precisely what we need to make our usage of the GHC API far far easier". With enough detail so we can understand their use-case.

Otherwise I worry that we might go to a lot of effort to solve the wrong problem; or to build a solution that does not, in the end, work for the actual use-case.

Another way to tackle this would be to ensure that syntax tree nodes have a "node-key" (a bit like their source location) that clients could use in a finite map, to map node-key to values of their choice.

I have not reviewed your patch in detail, but it's uncomfortable that the 'l' parameter gets into IfGblEnv and DsM. That doesn't smell right.

Ditto DynFlags/HscEnv, though I think here that you are right that the "hooks" interface is very crucial. After all, the WHOLE POINT is too make the client interface more flexible. I would consult Luite and Edsko, who were instrumental in designing the new hooks interface https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Ghc/Hooks (I'm not sure if that page is up to date, but I hope so)

A good way to proceed might be to identify some of the big users of the GHC API (I'm sure I don't know them all), discuss with them what would help them, and share the results on a wiki page.

Simon

| -----Original Message----- | From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Richard Eisenberg | Sent: 30 September 2014 03:04 | To: Edward Z. Yang | Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations | | I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: | I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a | big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also | really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile | to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), | which would avoid the noise? Maybe. | | What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get | such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a | chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is | that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to | have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, | unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in this | regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond | indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions | nicely. | | Richard | | On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" wrote: | | > Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 | -0700: | >> 1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update | the | >> HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all | >> the rest? | > | > I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I | think | > this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we | shouldn't | > add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack | > can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a | dynamically | > typed map for annotations.) | > | > Edward | > _______________________________________________ | > ghc-devs mailing list | > ghc-devs@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs | | _______________________________________________ | ghc-devs mailing list | ghc-devs@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

_______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

I looked into your proposed change in more detail, and I think it is flawed

...

because it is trying to map the annotation back to itself.

Flawed because it is no better, or flawed because it won't work?

I am not sure that I understand your proposal correctly, but I interpret the requirement to map the Dynamic type to the TypeRep of the constructor meaning some kind of separate linkage between the Constructor and the specific annotation type.

...

In this scenario I am not sure that there is a benefit to splitting the ApiAnn type into multiple separate ones.

Imagine you are traversing the syntax tree and looking at each constructor. With your proposal you have a LetIn node in your hand. You now grab an annotation (which may return Nothing), then you have to pattern match on the annotation to check you have a AnnLetIn node. With my proposal you have the LetIn, then you try and grab an AnnLetIn, which either returns Nothing or Just, and if it returns Just you know you have the right thing. One less dynamic value test, so a bit more safety.

This is a very good reason to break it into separate types. And then the reason for the Dynamic becomes clear.

That said, I'm willing to believe there is some level of generic-ness that is easier to leverage with the single annotation, so I'm not convinced my proposal is necessarily a good idea.

...

Also, it only relies on the AST being an instance of Data, which already holds.

Mine only relies on the annotation types being an instance of Typeable, which is far less burdensome (although somewhat irrelevant, since both criteria will be met).

Thanks, Neil

...

On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Neil Mitchell wrote:

...

I was getting a bit lost between the idea and the implementation. Let me try rephrasing the idea in my own words.

The goal: Capture inner source spans in AST syntax nodes. At the moment if ... then ... else ... captures the spans [if [...] then [...] else [...]]. We want to capture the spans for each keyword as well, so: [{if} [...] {then} [...] {else} [...]].

The proposal: Rather than add anything to the AST, have a separate mapping (SrcSpan,AstCtor) to [SrcSpan]. So you give in the SrcSpan from the IfThenElse node, and some token for the IfThenElse constructor, and get back a list of IfThenElse for the particular keyword.

I like the proposal because it adds nothing inside the AST, and requires no fresh invariants of the AST. I dislike it because the contents of that separate mapping are highly tied up with the AST, and easy to get out of sync. I think it's the right choice for three reasons, 1) it is easier to try out and doesn't break the AST, so we have more scope for changing our minds later; 2) the same technique is able to represent things other than SrcSpan without introducing a polymorphic src span; 3) the people who pay the complexity are the people who use it, which is relatively few people.

That said, as a tweak to the API, rather than a single data type for all annotations, you could have:

data AnnIfThenElse = AnnIfThenElse {posIf, posThen, posElse :: SrcSpan} data AnnDo = AnnDo {posDo :: SrcSpan}

Then you could just have an opaque Map (SrcSpan, TypeRep) Dynamic, with the invariant that the TypeRep in the key matches the Dynamic. Then you can have: getAnnotation :: Typeable a => Annotations -> SrcSpan -> Maybe a. I think it simplifies some of the TypeRep trickery you are engaging in with mkAnnKey.

Thanks, Neil

On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 5:06 PM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

...

Let me urge you, once more, to consult some actual heavy-duty users of these proposed facilities. I am very keen to avoid investing design and implementation effort in facilities that may not meet the need.

If they end up acclaiming the node-key idea, then we should surely simply make the key an abstract type, simply an instance of Hashable, Ord,

...

...

Simon

From: Alan & Kim Zimmerman [mailto:alan.zimm@gmail.com] Sent: 30 September 2014 19:48 To: Simon Peyton Jones Cc: Richard Eisenberg; Edward Z. Yang; ghc-devs@haskell.org

Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations

On further reflection of the goals for the annotation, I would like to put forward the following proposal for comment

Instead of physically placing a "node-key" in each AST Node, a virtual node key can be generated from any `GenLocated SrcSpan e' comprising a combination of the `SrcSpan` value and a unique identifier from the constructor for `e`, perhaps using its `TypeRep`, since the entire AST derives Typeable.

To further reduce the intrusiveness, a base Annotation type can be defined that captures the location of noise tokens for each AST constructor. This can then be emitted from the parser, if the appropriate flag is set to enable it.

So

data ApiAnnKey = AK SrcSpan TypeRep

mkApiAnnKey :: (Located e) -> ApiAnnKey mkApiAnnKey = ...

data Ann = .... | AnnHsLet SrcSpan -- of the word "let" SrcSpan -- of the word "in"

| AnnHsDo SrcSpan -- of the word "do"

And then in the parser

| 'let' binds 'in' exp { mkAnnHsLet $1 $3 (LL $ HsLet (unLoc $2) $4) }

The helper is

mkAnnHsLet :: Located a -> Located b -> LHsExpr RdrName -> P (LHsExpr RdrName) mkAnnHsLet (L l_let _) (L l_in _) e = do addAnnotation (mkAnnKey e) (AnnHsLet l_let l_in) return e;

The Parse Monad would have to accumulate the annotations to be returned at the end, if called with the appropriate flag.

There will be some boilerplate in getting the annotations and helper functions defined, but it will not pollute the rest.

This technique can also potentially be backported to support older GHC versions via a modification to ghc-parser.

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc-parser

Regards

Alan

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Alan & Kim Zimmerman wrote:

I tend to agree that this change is much too intrusive for what it attempts to do.

I think the concept of a node key could be workable, and ties in to

...

...

approach I am taking in ghc-exactprint [1], which uses a SrcSpan together with node type as the annotation key.

[1] https://github.com/alanz/ghc-exactprint

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

I'm anxious about it being too big a change too.

I'd be up for it if we had several "customers" all saying "yes, this is precisely what we need to make our usage of the GHC API far far easier". With enough detail so we can understand their use-case.

Otherwise I worry that we might go to a lot of effort to solve the wrong problem; or to build a solution that does not, in the end, work for

...

...

actual use-case.

Another way to tackle this would be to ensure that syntax tree nodes have a "node-key" (a bit like their source location) that clients could use in a finite map, to map node-key to values of their choice.

I have not reviewed your patch in detail, but it's uncomfortable that the 'l' parameter gets into IfGblEnv and DsM. That doesn't smell right.

Ditto DynFlags/HscEnv, though I think here that you are right that the "hooks" interface is very crucial. After all, the WHOLE POINT is too make the client interface more flexible. I would consult Luite and Edsko, who were instrumental in designing the new hooks interface https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Ghc/Hooks (I'm not sure if that page is up to date, but I hope so)

A good way to proceed might be to identify some of the big users of

...

...

GHC API (I'm sure I don't know them all), discuss with them what would help them, and share the results on a wiki page.

Simon

| -----Original Message----- | From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Richard Eisenberg | Sent: 30 September 2014 03:04 | To: Edward Z. Yang | Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations | | I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: | I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a | big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also | really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile | to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), | which would avoid the noise? Maybe. | | What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get | such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a | chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is | that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to | have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, | unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in

etc. the the the this

...

...

| regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond | indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions | nicely. | | Richard | | On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" wrote: | | > Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 | -0700: | >> 1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update | the | >> HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all | >> the rest? | > | > I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I | think | > this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we | shouldn't | > add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack | > can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a | dynamically | > typed map for annotations.) | > | > Edward | > _______________________________________________ | > ghc-devs mailing list | > ghc-devs@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs | | _______________________________________________ | ghc-devs mailing list | ghc-devs@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

_______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

After further discussion with Neil Mitchell arouund this, I have pushed an update through to https://phabricator.haskell.org/D297. It introduces one data structure per annotation, and allows the user to look up based on the SrcSpan of the annotated AST element and th expected annotation type. On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Neil Mitchell wrote:

I was getting a bit lost between the idea and the implementation. Let me try rephrasing the idea in my own words.

The goal: Capture inner source spans in AST syntax nodes. At the moment if ... then ... else ... captures the spans [if [...] then [...] else [...]]. We want to capture the spans for each keyword as well, so: [{if} [...] {then} [...] {else} [...]].

The proposal: Rather than add anything to the AST, have a separate mapping (SrcSpan,AstCtor) to [SrcSpan]. So you give in the SrcSpan from the IfThenElse node, and some token for the IfThenElse constructor, and get back a list of IfThenElse for the particular keyword.

I like the proposal because it adds nothing inside the AST, and requires no fresh invariants of the AST. I dislike it because the contents of that separate mapping are highly tied up with the AST, and easy to get out of sync. I think it's the right choice for three reasons, 1) it is easier to try out and doesn't break the AST, so we have more scope for changing our minds later; 2) the same technique is able to represent things other than SrcSpan without introducing a polymorphic src span; 3) the people who pay the complexity are the people who use it, which is relatively few people.

That said, as a tweak to the API, rather than a single data type for all annotations, you could have:

data AnnIfThenElse = AnnIfThenElse {posIf, posThen, posElse :: SrcSpan} data AnnDo = AnnDo {posDo :: SrcSpan}

Then you could just have an opaque Map (SrcSpan, TypeRep) Dynamic, with the invariant that the TypeRep in the key matches the Dynamic. Then you can have: getAnnotation :: Typeable a => Annotations -> SrcSpan -> Maybe a. I think it simplifies some of the TypeRep trickery you are engaging in with mkAnnKey.

Thanks, Neil

...

Let me urge you, once more, to consult some actual heavy-duty users of

...

proposed facilities. I am very keen to avoid investing design and implementation effort in facilities that may not meet the need.

If they end up acclaiming the node-key idea, then we should surely simply make the key an abstract type, simply an instance of Hashable, Ord, etc.

Simon

From: Alan & Kim Zimmerman [mailto:alan.zimm@gmail.com] Sent: 30 September 2014 19:48 To: Simon Peyton Jones Cc: Richard Eisenberg; Edward Z. Yang; ghc-devs@haskell.org

Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations

On further reflection of the goals for the annotation, I would like to

On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 5:06 PM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote: these put

...

forward the following proposal for comment

Instead of physically placing a "node-key" in each AST Node, a virtual node key can be generated from any `GenLocated SrcSpan e' comprising a combination of the `SrcSpan` value and a unique identifier from the constructor for `e`, perhaps using its `TypeRep`, since the entire AST derives Typeable.

To further reduce the intrusiveness, a base Annotation type can be defined that captures the location of noise tokens for each AST constructor. This can then be emitted from the parser, if the appropriate flag is set to enable it.

So

data ApiAnnKey = AK SrcSpan TypeRep

mkApiAnnKey :: (Located e) -> ApiAnnKey mkApiAnnKey = ...

data Ann = .... | AnnHsLet SrcSpan -- of the word "let" SrcSpan -- of the word "in"

| AnnHsDo SrcSpan -- of the word "do"

And then in the parser

| 'let' binds 'in' exp { mkAnnHsLet $1 $3 (LL $ HsLet (unLoc $2) $4) }

The helper is

mkAnnHsLet :: Located a -> Located b -> LHsExpr RdrName -> P (LHsExpr RdrName) mkAnnHsLet (L l_let _) (L l_in _) e = do addAnnotation (mkAnnKey e) (AnnHsLet l_let l_in) return e;

The Parse Monad would have to accumulate the annotations to be returned at the end, if called with the appropriate flag.

There will be some boilerplate in getting the annotations and helper functions defined, but it will not pollute the rest.

This technique can also potentially be backported to support older GHC versions via a modification to ghc-parser.

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc-parser

Regards

Alan

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Alan & Kim Zimmerman < alan.zimm@gmail.com> wrote:

I tend to agree that this change is much too intrusive for what it attempts to do.

I think the concept of a node key could be workable, and ties in to the approach I am taking in ghc-exactprint [1], which uses a SrcSpan together with node type as the annotation key.

[1] https://github.com/alanz/ghc-exactprint

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Simon Peyton Jones < simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote:

I'm anxious about it being too big a change too.

I'd be up for it if we had several "customers" all saying "yes, this is precisely what we need to make our usage of the GHC API far far easier". With enough detail so we can understand their use-case.

Otherwise I worry that we might go to a lot of effort to solve the wrong problem; or to build a solution that does not, in the end, work for the actual use-case.

Another way to tackle this would be to ensure that syntax tree nodes have a "node-key" (a bit like their source location) that clients could use in a finite map, to map node-key to values of their choice.

I have not reviewed your patch in detail, but it's uncomfortable that the 'l' parameter gets into IfGblEnv and DsM. That doesn't smell right.

Ditto DynFlags/HscEnv, though I think here that you are right that the "hooks" interface is very crucial. After all, the WHOLE POINT is too make the client interface more flexible. I would consult Luite and Edsko, who were instrumental in designing the new hooks interface https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Ghc/Hooks (I'm not sure if that page is up to date, but I hope so)

A good way to proceed might be to identify some of the big users of the GHC API (I'm sure I don't know them all), discuss with them what would help them, and share the results on a wiki page.

Simon

| -----Original Message----- | From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Richard Eisenberg | Sent: 30 September 2014 03:04 | To: Edward Z. Yang | Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations | | I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: | I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a | big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also | really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile | to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), | which would avoid the noise? Maybe. | | What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get | such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a | chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is | that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to | have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, | unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in this | regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond | indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions | nicely. | | Richard | | On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" wrote: | | > Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 | -0700: | >> 1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update | the | >> HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all | >> the rest? | > | > I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I | think | > this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we | shouldn't | > add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack | > can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a | dynamically | > typed map for annotations.) | > | > Edward | > _______________________________________________ | > ghc-devs mailing list | > ghc-devs@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs | | _______________________________________________ | ghc-devs mailing list | ghc-devs@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

_______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

Let me urge you, once again, to consult users. I really do not want to implement a feature that (thus far) lacks a single enthusiastic user. Please. Simon From: Alan & Kim Zimmerman [mailto:alan.zimm@gmail.com] Sent: 01 October 2014 16:13 To: Simon Peyton Jones Cc: Richard Eisenberg; Edward Z. Yang; ghc-devs@haskell.org Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations I have put up a new diff at https://phabricator.haskell.org/D297 It is just a proof of concept at this point, to check if the approach is acceptable. This is much less intrusive, and only affects the lexer/parser, in what should be a transparent way. The new module ApiAnnotation was introduced because it needs to be imported by Lexer.x, and I was worried about another circular import cycle. It does also allow the annotations to be defined in a self-contained way, which can then easily be used by other external projects such as ghc-parser. If there is consensus that this will not break anything else, I would like to go ahead and add the rest of the annotations. Regards Alan On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Simon Peyton Jones mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote: I'm anxious about it being too big a change too. I'd be up for it if we had several "customers" all saying "yes, this is precisely what we need to make our usage of the GHC API far far easier". With enough detail so we can understand their use-case. Otherwise I worry that we might go to a lot of effort to solve the wrong problem; or to build a solution that does not, in the end, work for the actual use-case. Another way to tackle this would be to ensure that syntax tree nodes have a "node-key" (a bit like their source location) that clients could use in a finite map, to map node-key to values of their choice. I have not reviewed your patch in detail, but it's uncomfortable that the 'l' parameter gets into IfGblEnv and DsM. That doesn't smell right. Ditto DynFlags/HscEnv, though I think here that you are right that the "hooks" interface is very crucial. After all, the WHOLE POINT is too make the client interface more flexible. I would consult Luite and Edsko, who were instrumental in designing the new hooks interface https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Ghc/Hooks (I'm not sure if that page is up to date, but I hope so) A good way to proceed might be to identify some of the big users of the GHC API (I'm sure I don't know them all), discuss with them what would help them, and share the results on a wiki page. Simon | -----Original Message----- | From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.orgmailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Richard Eisenberg | Sent: 30 September 2014 03:04 | To: Edward Z. Yang | Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.orgmailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations | | I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: | I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a | big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also | really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile | to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), | which would avoid the noise? Maybe. | | What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get | such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a | chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is | that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to | have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, | unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in this | regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond | indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions | nicely. | | Richard | | On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" mailto:ezyang@mit.edu> wrote: | | > Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 | -0700: | >> 1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update | the | >> HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all | >> the rest? | > | > I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I | think | > this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we | shouldn't | > add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack | > can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a | dynamically | > typed map for annotations.) | > | > Edward | > _______________________________________________ | > ghc-devs mailing list | > ghc-devs@haskell.orgmailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs | | _______________________________________________ | ghc-devs mailing list | ghc-devs@haskell.orgmailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.orgmailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

Ok, report back 24 hrs after a Haskell Cafe email [1] and reference to it on Reddit [2]. The Reddit post has 16 upvotes and no downvotes. The Haskell Cafe post generated two reponses, one from Andrew Gibiansky (IHaskell,ghc-parser), and one from Mateusz Kowalczyk (Haddock,yi,GHC), both in favour. Neil Mitchell (hlint) has also expressed support on this mailing list. And of course the most enthusiastic user is me, as it will simplify HaRe dramatically. [1] http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2014-October/116267.html [2] http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/2i0jo8/haskellcafe_ghc_710_ghcapi_c... On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

Let me urge you, once again, to consult users. I really do not want to implement a feature that (thus far) lacks a single enthusiastic user. Please.

Simon

*From:* Alan & Kim Zimmerman [mailto:alan.zimm@gmail.com] *Sent:* 01 October 2014 16:13 *To:* Simon Peyton Jones *Cc:* Richard Eisenberg; Edward Z. Yang; ghc-devs@haskell.org

*Subject:* Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations

I have put up a new diff at https://phabricator.haskell.org/D297

It is just a proof of concept at this point, to check if the approach is acceptable.

This is much less intrusive, and only affects the lexer/parser, in what should be a transparent way.

The new module ApiAnnotation was introduced because it needs to be imported by Lexer.x, and I was worried about another circular import cycle. It does also allow the annotations to be defined in a self-contained way, which can then easily be used by other external projects such as ghc-parser.

If there is consensus that this will not break anything else, I would like to go ahead and add the rest of the annotations.

Regards

Alan

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Simon Peyton Jones < simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote:

I'm anxious about it being too big a change too.

I'd be up for it if we had several "customers" all saying "yes, this is precisely what we need to make our usage of the GHC API far far easier". With enough detail so we can understand their use-case.

Otherwise I worry that we might go to a lot of effort to solve the wrong problem; or to build a solution that does not, in the end, work for the actual use-case.

Another way to tackle this would be to ensure that syntax tree nodes have a "node-key" (a bit like their source location) that clients could use in a finite map, to map node-key to values of their choice.

I have not reviewed your patch in detail, but it's uncomfortable that the 'l' parameter gets into IfGblEnv and DsM. That doesn't smell right.

Ditto DynFlags/HscEnv, though I think here that you are right that the "hooks" interface is very crucial. After all, the WHOLE POINT is too make the client interface more flexible. I would consult Luite and Edsko, who were instrumental in designing the new hooks interface https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Ghc/Hooks (I'm not sure if that page is up to date, but I hope so)

A good way to proceed might be to identify some of the big users of the GHC API (I'm sure I don't know them all), discuss with them what would help them, and share the results on a wiki page.

Simon

| -----Original Message----- | From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of | Richard Eisenberg | Sent: 30 September 2014 03:04 | To: Edward Z. Yang | Cc: ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Feedback request for #9628 AST Annotations | | I'm only speaking up because Alan is specifically requesting feedback: | I'm really ambivalent about this. I agree with Edward that this is a | big change and adds permanent noise in a lot of places. But, I also | really respect the goal here -- better tool support. Is it worthwhile | to do this using a dynamically typed bit (using Typeable and such), | which would avoid the noise? Maybe. | | What do other languages do? Do we know what, say, Agda does to get | such tight coupling with an editor? Does, say, Eclipse have such a | chummy relationship with a Java compiler to do its refactoring, or is | that separately implemented? Haskell/GHC is not the first project to | have this problem, and there's plenty of solutions out there. And, | unlike most other times, I don't think Haskell is exceptional in this | regard (there's nothing very special about Haskell's AST, maybe beyond | indentation-awareness), so we can probably adopt other solutions | nicely. | | Richard | | On Sep 29, 2014, at 8:58 PM, "Edward Z. Yang" wrote: | | > Excerpts from Alan & Kim Zimmerman's message of 2014-09-29 13:38:45 | -0700: | >> 1. Is this change too big, should I scale it back to just update | the | >> HsSyn structures and then lock it down to Located SrcSpan for all | >> the rest? | > | > I don't claim to speak for the rest of the GHC developers, but I | think | > this change is too big. I am almost tempted to say that we | shouldn't | > add the type parameter at all, and do something else (maybe Backpack | > can let us extend SrcSpan in a modular way, or even use a | dynamically | > typed map for annotations.) | > | > Edward | > _______________________________________________ | > ghc-devs mailing list | > ghc-devs@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs | | _______________________________________________ | ghc-devs mailing list | ghc-devs@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs