#8095: TypeFamilies painfully slow -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: MikeIzbicki | Owner: Type: bug | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Compiler (Type | Version: 7.6.3 checker) | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Keywords: | Type of failure: Compile-time Architecture: Unknown/Multiple | performance bug Difficulty: Unknown | Test Case: Blocked By: | Blocking: Related Tickets: 5321 | -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- I'm using the TypeFamilies extension to generate types that are quite large. GHC can handle these large types fine when they are created manually, but when type families get involved, GHC's performance dies. Unlike in ticket #5321, using tail recursion does not eliminate the problem, and the order of arguments greatly affects compile time. I've attached a file Types.hs that demonstrates the problems. This file generates another Haskell file which has the problems. It takes 3 flags. The first is the size of the type to generate, the second is which type family function to use, and the third is whether to call the type family or just use a manually generated type. Here are my performance results: Using non-tail recursion, I get these results. I have to increase the stack size based on the size of the type I want to generate. {{{ $ ./Types 200 a a > test.hs && time ghc test.hs > /dev/null -fcontext- stack=250 real 0m2.973s $ ./Types 300 a a > test.hs && time ghc test.hs > /dev/null -fcontext- stack=350 real 0m6.018s $ ./Types 400 a a > test.hs && time ghc test.hs > /dev/null -fcontext- stack=450 real 0m9.995s $ ./Types 500 a a > test.hs && time ghc test.hs > /dev/null -fcontext- stack=550 real 0m15.645s }}} Tail recursion generates much slower compile times for some reason, and I still need to adjust the stack size: {{{ $ ./Types 200 b a > test.hs && time ghc test.hs > /dev/null -fcontext- stack=250 real 0m16.120s }}} Changing the order of arguments to the recursive type family greatly changes the run times: {{{ $ ./Types 200 c a > test.hs && time ghc test.hs > /dev/null -fcontext- stack=250 real 0m6.095s }}} Without the type family, I get MUCH better performance: {{{ $ ./Types 10000 a d > test.hs && time ghc test.hs > /dev/null real 0m2.271s }}} -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8095 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler