#12388: Don't barf on failures in the RTS linker -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: dobenour | Owner: Type: bug | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: 8.2.1 Component: Runtime | Version: 8.0.1 System (Linker) | Keywords: | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: | Type of failure: None/Unknown Unknown/Multiple | Test Case: | Blocked By: Blocking: | Related Tickets: Differential Rev(s): | Wiki Page: -------------------------------------+------------------------------------- The RTS linker currently calls `barf()` when it fails. This is a problem because: 1. It appears that there is a bug in GHC, when there is no bug. 2. Failures to load code really should be recoverable. According to a `TODO` in the code, the culprit is resource deallocation, which is very difficult due to the code being written in C and having complicated control flow. There are a few solutions: - Port the RTS linker to C++ and use RAII for resource management. Failures would be handled (internally to the linker) by throwing a C++ exception. This is actually my favorite, but might not be popular with the GHC devs. - Build a huge context struct containing all needed resources and free it before returning. Signal errors with `longjmp()`. - Try to find each and every place where resources need to be free, and free them by hand. Signal errors with return codes. This seems too error-prone. -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/12388 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler