#12463: SPECIALIZABLE pragma? -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: bgamari | Owner: Type: feature request | Status: new Priority: low | Milestone: Component: Compiler | Version: 8.0.1 Resolution: | Keywords: Inlining Operating System: Unknown/Multiple | Architecture: | Unknown/Multiple Type of failure: None/Unknown | Test Case: Blocked By: | Blocking: Related Tickets: | Differential Rev(s): Wiki Page: | -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Description changed by bgamari: @@ -93,1 +93,12 @@ - need to know about `aLibrarFunction`'s expectations of the simplifier. + need to know about `aLibraryFunction`'s expectations of the simplifier. + + === A definition of `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE` == + + The `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE` pragma can be attached to top-level + identifiers. Like `INLINEABLE`, `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE` would force GHC to + produce an unfolding for the identifier to which it is attached. Unlike + `INLINEABLE`, it also forces GHC to produce an unfolding for all top-level + identifiers which contain a polymorphic call-site of an identifier marked + as `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE`. This ensures that GHC is able to produce + specialisations for all concrete instantiations of functions marked as + `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE`. New description: Currently it is common practice for library authors to use the `INLINEABLE` pragma to make it more likely that a polymorphic function should get an unfolding in the module's interface file to ensure that GHC is able to specialize. While in practice this works reasonably well, it's not really saying what we often mean: we don't want to inline, we really just want GHC to behave like each use-site's module has a `SPECIALISE` pragma for each concrete type that the function is used at. For instance, consider, {{{#!hs module ALibrary where aLibraryFunction :: AClass a => a -> a aLibraryFunction = {- some large expression involving methods of AClass -} module SomeUser where import ALibrary aUser :: Int -> Int aUser = {- some large expression involving aLibraryFunction -} }}} Ideally, we would want GHC to take and produce one specialized version of `aLibraryFunction` for every concrete type which it is used at. However, without an `INLINEABLE` function, GHC won't even consider producing an unfolding for `aLibraryFunction` due to its size. We can only convince GHC to produce an unfolding for `aLibraryFunction` if we annotate it with an `INLINEABLE` pragma. While this is often effective, it doesn't really say what we mean: We don't never want GHC to inline; merely to specialize. This is issue especially prevalent in code using MTL-style effects, where we have ubiquitous overloading of very frequently-used functions (e.g. bind). Really what we want in this case is a way of indicating to GHC that a function shouldn't be inlined (use-sites replaced with the body of the function), but rather that GHC should try hard to specialize away particular type variables. This might look like, {{{#!hs aLibraryFunction :: AClass a => a -> a aLibraryFunction = {- some large expression involving methods of AClass -} {-# SPECIALISE(a) forall a. aLibraryFunction :: a -> a #-} }}} The list of type binders after `SPECIALISE` is the set of binders which GHC would attempt to specialize. This pragma requests that GHC keep an inlining around and produce a specialized version of `aLibraryFunction` every time it saw a concrete instantiation of `a`. Moreover, the produced symbols could be declared as weak, allowing the linker to cull duplicated code when possible. = Transitive specialisation = The above `SPECIALISE` pragma still doesn't address the fragility of specialisation, however. Namely, consider, {{{#!hs module ALibrary where class AClass instance AClass Int aLibraryFunction :: AClass a => a -> a aLibraryFunction = {- some large expression involving methods of AClass -} {-# SPECIALISE(a) forall a. aLibraryFunction :: a -> a #-} module AnotherLibrary where import ALibrary aFunction :: AClass a => a -> a aFunction x = {- ... -} aLibraryFunction x {- ... -} module AUser where import AnotherLibrary f = let x :: Int x = 5 in aFunction x }}} Here `aLibraryFunction` may depend crucially on specialisation; however, the polymorphic user `aFunction` has no way of knowing this and may be too large for GHC to produce an unfolding automatically. This ultimately means that GHC will be unable to specialise the eventual instantiation at `Int` in `AUser.f`. This will mean that the performance characteristics of `ALibrary` will be rather fragile. One (admittedly rather heavy) approach to solving this fragility is to inform GHC that `aLibraryFunction`'s polymorphic callsites should have unfoldings, ensuring that we are able to specialise the eventual monomorphic callsite, {{{#!hs aLibraryFunction :: AClass a => a -> a aLibraryFunction = {- some large expression involving methods of AClass -} {-# SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE(a) forall a. aLibraryFunction :: a -> a #-} }}} Which would ensure that polymorphic use-sites of `aLibraryFunction` would themselves be marked as `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE`, shielding users from the need to know about `aLibraryFunction`'s expectations of the simplifier. === A definition of `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE` == The `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE` pragma can be attached to top-level identifiers. Like `INLINEABLE`, `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE` would force GHC to produce an unfolding for the identifier to which it is attached. Unlike `INLINEABLE`, it also forces GHC to produce an unfolding for all top-level identifiers which contain a polymorphic call-site of an identifier marked as `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE`. This ensures that GHC is able to produce specialisations for all concrete instantiations of functions marked as `SPECIALISE_RECURSIVE`. -- -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/12463#comment:16 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler