[GHC] #8290: lookupSymbol API is unsafe

#8290: lookupSymbol API is unsafe -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: ezyang | Owner: Type: task | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Runtime System | Version: 7.7 Keywords: | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: Unknown/Multiple | Type of failure: Documentation Difficulty: Easy (less than 1 | bug hour) | Test Case: Blocked By: | Blocking: Related Tickets: | -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- lookupSymbol is one of those functions that looks nice and innocuous on the tin, until you realize actually it doesn't actually do what you want, and seduces you into writing code that doesn't work on Mac OS X. Case in point, this recent test suite commit: {{{ commit 29b0521cd9be39b4026103d184d1fec14ef3bc22 Author: Edward Z. Yang Date: Fri Sep 13 20:52:57 2013 -0700 Properly provide leading underscore when necessary. Signed-off-by: Edward Z. Yang }}} Yes, the API is "correct" in some sense, but from a portability sense, we really want the function to add the underscore itself. If we change this particular function, we will probably break most dynamic loading code (including GHC's). We could also add a safe variant of the function. We just need to decide something to do. -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8290 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler