[ghc-steering-committee] Re: GHC proposal: specification of static

I'm in favour of this proposal. It's simple, and, I would argue, more expected than the more advanced semantics that we used to have. Static pointers aren't very much used any way, so a small regression in capabilities isn't going to be a problem. I did ask for an extra discussion in the Alternatives section on the Github thread, for the sake of future documentation. But this doesn't need to hold my vote. On Wed, 3 Dec 2025 at 15:08, Jakob Brünker wrote:

Hey all,

our own Simon Peyton Jones proposes to simplify static pointers:

Static pointers are a feature https://ghc.gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/doc/users_guide/exts/static_pointers.html that allows you to get pointers to expressions that are valid across different processes and machines.

Allowing these expressions to reference certain types of local bindings has been producing issues that are hard to fix. The proposal suggests that instead we could just not allow that - simplifying both the specification and the implementation without placing a large burden on users (e.g. bindings can just be moved to the top level instead).

See the proposal itself for details: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/wip/spj-static/proposals...

I recommend *acceptance*. The cost of trying to figure out how to support the current spec is not worth the fairly marginal gain over the proposed simplification.

It would be great if I could get your responses on this by December 10.

Thanks, Jakob

On Tue, Nov 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM Adam Gundry wrote:

...

Dear Committee,

Simon proposes to simplify the specification of StaticPointers:

https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/732

https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/wip/spj-static/proposals...

I'd like to nominate Jakob as the shepherd.

Please guide us to a conclusion as outlined in

https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/README.rst#commit....

If possible, please aim to make a recommendation by 9th December 2025.

Cheers,

Adam

On 25/11/2025 12:18, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

...

Adam

I'd like to submit this proposal to the Committee

https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/wip/spj-static/ proposals/0000-simplify-static.rst <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ ghc-proposals/blob/wip/spj-static/proposals/0000-simplify-static.rst>

Thanks

Simon

-- Adam Gundry, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, https://www.well-typed.com/

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