#9429: Alternative to type family Any -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: mboes | Owner: Type: feature request | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Compiler | Version: 7.9 Keywords: | Operating System: Architecture: Unknown/Multiple | Unknown/Multiple Difficulty: Unknown | Type of failure: Blocked By: | None/Unknown Related Tickets: 9097, 9380 | Test Case: | Blocking: | Differential Revisions: -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- In GHC HEAD, `Any` is no longer a datatype. There are good reasons for this change, one of which was explained in #9097, the original ticket, and another in #9380. Unfortunately, a casualty of this change is that it is no longer easy to generalize the [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/rank1dynamic|rank1dynamic package] to rank-1 types with type variables of arbitrary kind (not just `*`). We submitted a way to do so [here], that exploits the fact that `Any` has the very magical property of inhabiting *all* kinds, including closed ones. This works for GHC 7.8, but won't work in HEAD, because we require that there exists a `Typeable` instance for `Any`, just as there are `Typeable` instances for any other type one wishes to have instances for. The reason is that now that `Any` is a type family, `Any` is no longer a legal instance head. There are several possible solutions that I see: * while it's clearly dangerous for the compiler to be inserting the old `Any` during typechecking from the moment that we have computation in types over closed kinds, we may still want the old `Any`, say under a different name, as a backdoor. It wouldn't be used by the compiler during type checking - only by packages such as rank1dynamic. I believe that furthermore, if we restrict the old `Any` to not inhabit closed kinds, then none of the problems cited in the above tickets arise. * Instead of making the new `Any` a type family, keep it a datatype, but ban it from inhabiting closed kinds. I don't know if such an `Any` would be sufficient for the purposes of GHC, however. * Hardwire a `Typeable` instance for the `Any` type family (not sure if this makes sense). -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/9429 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler