#13151: Make all never-exported IfaceDecls implicit -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: ezyang | Owner: ezyang Type: task | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Compiler | Version: 8.1 (Type checker) | Keywords: backpack | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: | Type of failure: None/Unknown Unknown/Multiple | Test Case: | Blocked By: Blocking: | Related Tickets: Differential Rev(s): | Wiki Page: -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Consider the representation of an instance in an interface file. It is always associated with a DFun, but the DFun is stored as a separate IfaceDecl. You might wonder if it's possible for an IfaceClsInst to refer to an externally defined DFun, or if it's possible to have a DFun but no IfaceClsInst associated with it. The current ClsInst representation won't tell you, but in fact, it's impossible. For example, DFuns are manually added to the type environment by TidyPgm, which literally goes through the list of ClsInsts to pull out the set of DFunIds which need to be added to the TypeEnv. This all seems horribly indirect. Why not just *embed* the IfaceDecl describing the DFun inside IfaceClsInst, and treat the DFun as an "implicit TyThing"? This makes it clear that the instance declaration canonically defines the DFun. To do this, we have to expand our idea of implicit TyThings; at the moment, only a TyThing can be associated with implicit TyThings. With this change, instances and family instances can also be associated with implicit TyThings. But this doesn't seem like too much. Why does this matter? I was cleaning up some code in Backpack, and I noticed that I had written some very complicated things to handle DFuns and coercion axioms, because they were indirected through a Name, even though morally they should have been "implicit"-like things. The proposed refactor here would solve this correctness problem. -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/13151 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler