May 2016 - Glasgow-haskell-users

TDNR without new operators or syntax changes
by Jeremy 22 Jun '16

22 Jun '16

Previous attempts to propose TDNR [1] have met with opposition over the accompanying proposal to change the syntax of the dot or add a new operator for postfix application. However, nothing about TDNR - other than certain motivating examples - actually requires changes to the syntax of Haskell or new operators. TDNR could be implemented as an extension which just give GHC a new way of disambiguating function names, and nothing else. This would still have some advantages: - Redundant module qualification no longer required. - Unqualified imports could be changed to a different module with the same interface (a very poor-man's backpack) without any other code changes. - People who want TDNR with postfix function application will only need to define a simple postfix operator. I would therefore like to propose TNDR without any syntax/prelude changes. [1] https://prime.haskell.org/wiki/TypeDirectedNameResolution -- View this message in context: http://haskell.1045720.n5.nabble.com/TDNR-without-new-operators-or-syntax-c… Sent from the Haskell - Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Re: TDNR without new operators or syntax changes
by Jeremy . 29 May '16

29 May '16

Yes, that it indeed was I meant. AntC seems to be replying to a much more complicated/invasive proposal than what I had intended, apologies if I wasn't clear. (I see in retrospect that I may have misunderstood the original TDNR proposal, understandably leading to confusion.) 1. If the compiler encounters a term f a, and there is more than one definition for f in scope (after following all of the usual rules for qualified imports); 2. And exactly one of these definitions matches the type of a (or the expected type of f if given); 3. Then this is the definition to use. That is all, although point 2 could be extended to consider the return type of f or other arguments as well. Even with the extension on, it would have no effect on programs which compile without it. This has nothing to do with ORF, which relies on magic type classes (although there is some overlap in what it can achieve). The primary use-case I had in mind is disambiguating name clashes between local and/or unqualified imports. Cross-posting to cafe and libraries as this doesn't seem to have attracted a lot of interest in users. Maybe it's just a boring proposal, maybe I didn't post it to the right list.

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[ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.0.1 is available!
by Ben Gamari 27 May '16

27 May '16

=============================================== The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 8.0.1 =============================================== The GHC developers are very pleased to announce the release of the first new super-major version of our Haskell compiler in six years, GHC 8.0.1. This release features dozens of exciting developments including, * A more refined interface for implicit call-stacks, allowing libraries to provide more helpful runtime error messages to users * The introduction of the DuplicateRecordFields language extension, allowing multiple record types to declare fields of the same name * Significant improvements in error message readability and content, including facilities for libraries to provide custom error messages, more aggressive warnings for fragile rewrite rules, and more helpful errors for missing imports * A rewritten and substantially more thorough pattern match checker, providing more precise exhaustiveness checking in GADT pattern matches * More reliable debugging information including experimental backtrace support, allowing better integration with traditional debugging tools * Support for desugaring do-notation to use Applicative combinators, allowing the intuitive do notation to be used in settings which previously required the direct use of Applicative combinators * The introduction of Strict and StrictData language extensions, allowing modules to be compiled with strict-by-default evaluation of bindings * Great improvements in portability, including more reliable linking on Windows, a new PPC64 code generator, support for the AIX operating system, unregisterised m68k support, and significant stabilization on ARM targets * A greatly improved user's guide, with beautiful and modern PDF and HTML output * Introduction of type application syntax, reducing the need for proxies * More complete support for pattern synonyms, including record pattern synonyms and the ability to export patterns "bundled" with a type, as you would a data constructor * Support for injective type families and recursive superclass relationships * An improved generics representation leveraging GHC's support for type-level literals * The TypeInType extension, which unifies types and kinds, allowing GHC to reason about kind equality and enabling promotion of more constructs to the type level * ...and more! A more thorough list of the changes included in this release can be found in the release notes, https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.0.1/docs/html/users_guide/8.0.1-notes.… As always, we have collected various points of interest for users of previous GHC releases on the GHC 8.0 migration page, https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Migration/8.0 Please let us know if you encounter anything missing or unclear on this page. This release is the culmination of nearly eighteen months of effort by over one hundred contributors. We'd like to thank everyone who has contributed code, bug reports, and feedback over the past year. It's only because of their efforts that GHC continues to evolve. How to get it ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Both the source tarball and binary distributions for a wide variety of platforms are available at, http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ Background ~~~~~~~~~~ Haskell is a standardized lazy functional programming language. The Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell. Included is an optimising compiler generating efficient code for a variety of platforms, together with an interactive system for convenient, quick development. The distribution includes space and time profiling facilities, a large collection of libraries, and support for various language extensions, including concurrency, exceptions, and foreign language interfaces. GHC is distributed under a BSD-style open source license. Supported Platforms ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The list of platforms we support, and the people responsible for them, can be found on the GHC wiki http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Platforms Ports to other platforms are possible with varying degrees of difficulty. The Building Guide describes how to go about porting to a new platform: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building Developers ~~~~~~~~~~ We welcome new contributors. Instructions on getting started with hacking on GHC are available from GHC's developer site, http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Community Resources ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are mailing lists for GHC users, develpoers, and monitoring bug tracker activity; to subscribe, use the web interfaces at http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-tickets There are several other Haskell and GHC-related mailing lists on www.haskell.org; for the full list, see https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo Some GHC developers hang out on the #ghc and #haskell of the Freenode IRC network, too: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel Please report bugs using our bug tracking system. Instructions on reporting bugs can be found here: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/reportabug

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Pattern synonyms and GADTs in GHC 8.0.1
by Emil Axelsson 26 May '16

26 May '16

I have a problem where a pattern synonym doesn't provide the expected type refinement in GHC 8.0.1. > {-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-} > {-# LANGUAGE PatternSynonyms #-} > > data Exp a > where > Num :: (Eq a, Num a) => a -> Exp a > Add :: (Eq a, Num a) => Exp a -> Exp a -> Exp a > > pattern NumP a = Num a > > pattern AddP :: (Num a, Eq a) => Exp a -> Exp a -> Exp a > pattern AddP a b = Add a b > > simplifyP :: Exp a -> Exp a > simplifyP (AddP a (NumP 0)) = a > simplifyP a = a This gives the error • No instance for (Eq a) arising from a pattern Possible fix: add (Eq a) to the context of the type signature for: simplifyP :: Exp a -> Exp a • In the pattern: AddP a (NumP 0) In an equation for ‘simplifyP’: simplifyP (AddP a (NumP 0)) = a If I remove the type signature for `AddP`, the code goes through. Unfortunately, in my real code I need the type signature in order to resolve overloading. GHC 7.10 didn't have this problem. Is this a bug? / Emil

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Cannot install 8.0.1 from bindist
by Peter 25 May '16

25 May '16

Trying to install ghc-8.0.1-x86_64-centos67-linux.tar.xz with: ./configure --prefix={prefix} make install-strip gives me an error. The tail of the log is: Registering ghc-8.0.1... for f in '{prefix}/lib/ghc-8.0.1/package.conf.d'/*; do create () { touch "$1" && chmod 644 "$1" ; } && create "$f"; done /usr/bin/install -c -m 755 -d "{prefix}/bin" for i in utils/hp2ps/dist/build/tmp/hp2ps; do \ /usr/bin/install -c -m 755 -s $i "{prefix}/bin" ; \ done /usr/bin/install -c -m 755 -d "{prefix}/lib/ghc-8.0.1/bin" for i in inplace/lib/bin/ghc-split; do \ /usr/bin/install -c -m 755 $i "{prefix}/lib/ghc-8.0.1/bin"; \ done /usr/bin/install -c -m 755 -d "{prefix}/share/doc/ghc-8.0.1" /usr/bin/install -c -m 755 -d "{prefix}/share/doc/ghc-8.0.1/html" /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 docs/index.html "{prefix}/share/doc/ghc-8.0.1/html" /usr/bin/install -c -m 755 -d "{prefix}/share/doc/ghc-8.0.1/html/libraries" for i in libraries/dist-haddock/*; do \ /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 $i "{prefix}/share/doc/ghc-8.0.1/html/libraries/"; \ done /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 libraries/prologue.txt "{prefix}/share/doc/ghc-8.0.1/html/libraries/" /usr/bin/install -c -m 755 libraries/gen_contents_index "{prefix}/share/doc/ghc-8.0.1/html/libraries/" mkdir: cannot create directory `doc/aries/ghc-prim-0.5.0.0': No such file or directory Is there any way of knowing what the call to mkdir is relative to, and why it's trying to create the directory there? -- View this message in context: http://haskell.1045720.n5.nabble.com/Cannot-install-8-0-1-from-bindist-tp58… Sent from the Haskell - Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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suboptimal ghc code generation in IO vs equivalent pure code case
by Harendra Kumar 16 May '16

16 May '16

I have a loop which runs millions of times. For some reason I have to run it in the IO monad. I noticed that when I convert the code from pure to IO monad the generated assembly code in essence is almost identical except one difference where it puts a piece of code in a separate block which is making a huge difference in performance (4-6x slower). I want to understand what makes GHC to generate code in this way and if there is anything that can be done at source level (or ghc option) to control that. The pure code looks like this: decomposeChars :: [Char] -> [Char] decomposeChars [] = [] decomposeChars [x] = case NFD.isDecomposable x of True -> decomposeChars (NFD.decomposeChar x) False -> [x] decomposeChars (x : xs) = decomposeChars [x] ++ decomposeChars xs The equivalent IO code is this: decomposeStrIO :: [Char] -> IO [Char] decomposeStrPtr !p = decomposeStrIO where decomposeStrIO [] = return [] decomposeStrIO [x] = do res <- NFD.isDecomposable p x case res of True -> decomposeStrIO (NFD.decomposeChar x) False -> return [x] decomposeStrIO (x : xs) = do s1 <- decomposeStrIO [x] s2 <- decomposeStrIO xs return (s1 ++ s2) The difference is in how the code corresponding to the call to the (++) operation is generated. In the pure case the (++) operation is inline in the main loop: _cn5N: movq $sat_sn2P_info,-48(%r12) movq %rax,-32(%r12) movq %rcx,-24(%r12) movq $:_con_info,-16(%r12) movq 16(%rbp),%rax movq %rax,-8(%r12) movq $GHC.Types.[]_closure+1,(%r12) leaq -48(%r12),%rsi leaq -14(%r12),%r14 addq $40,%rbp jmp GHC.Base.++_info In the IO monad version this code is placed in a separate block and a call is placed in the main loop: the main loop call site: _cn6A: movq $sat_sn3w_info,-24(%r12) movq 8(%rbp),%rax movq %rax,-8(%r12) movq %rbx,(%r12) leaq -24(%r12),%rbx addq $40,%rbp jmp *(%rbp) out of the line block - the code that was in the main loop in the previous case is now moved to this block (see label _cn5s below): sat_sn3w_info: _cn5p: leaq -16(%rbp),%rax cmpq %r15,%rax jb _cn5q _cn5r: addq $24,%r12 cmpq 856(%r13),%r12 ja _cn5t _cn5s: movq $stg_upd_frame_info,-16(%rbp) movq %rbx,-8(%rbp) movq 16(%rbx),%rax movq 24(%rbx),%rbx movq $:_con_info,-16(%r12) movq %rax,-8(%r12) movq $GHC.Types.[]_closure+1,(%r12) movq %rbx,%rsi leaq -14(%r12),%r14 addq $-16,%rbp jmp GHC.Base.++_info _cn5t: movq $24,904(%r13) _cn5q: jmp *-16(%r13) Except this difference the rest of the assembly looks pretty similar in both the cases. The corresponding dump-simpl output for the pure case: False -> ++ @ Char (GHC.Types.: @ Char ww_amuh (GHC.Types.[] @ Char)) (Data.Unicode.Internal.Normalization.decompose_$sdecompose ipv_smuv ipv1_smuD); And for the IO monad version: False -> case $sa1_sn0g ipv_smUT ipv1_smV6 ipv2_imWU of _ [Occ=Dead] { (# ipv4_XmXv, ipv5_XmXx #) -> (# ipv4_XmXv, ++ @ Char (GHC.Types.: @ Char sc_sn0b (GHC.Types.[] @ Char)) ipv5_XmXx #) }; The dump-simpl output is essentially the same except the difference due to the realworld token in the IO case. Why is the generated code different? I will appreciate if someone can throw some light on the reason or can point to the relevant ghc source to look at where this happens. I am using ghc-7.10.3 in native code generation mode (no llvm). Thanks, Harendra

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Magic classes for Overloaded Record Fields, overlaps, FunDeps
by AntC 15 May '16

15 May '16

There's an intriguing comment here wrt anonymous records: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Records/OverloadedRecordFields/ MagicClasses#Designextension:anonymousrecords (End of the section) "... this doesn't quite work, because the two instances overlap, but it is possible with a bit more trickery" I could well understand if everybody's forgotten what was the "trickery", because ORF has been so long in the pipeline, but could anyone explain? Reason for the q: I'm looking at anonymous records myself, including extending, shortening and joining anon records. And yes overlapping instances are everywhere. Using type families isn't being too ergonomic. And I notice ORF has used FunDeps. But for me, FunDeps in the HList style is also rather ugly. Is there some trickery I'm missing? Thanks AntC

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Looking for GHC compile-time performance tests
by Ben Gamari 07 May '16

07 May '16

tl;dr. Do you have a Haskell project which GHC now compiles more slowly than in the past? If you would like to see your program's compilation time improve in 8.2, reduce it to a minimal testcase, and provide it to us via Trac. Good news everyone, GHC 8.2 will be a release largely targetting consolidation instead of new features. In particular, we will focus on compiler performance issues. One of the challenges of this task is knowing in which ways GHC has regressed. It is currently hard to know how much of the apparent compiler performance regression is due to GHC getting slower and how much is due to users demanding more of it. To better understand the performance of our compiler, we would like to collect modern Haskell code samples that exhibit compile-time performance issues (either regressions or otherwise). For this we are asking for your help: we are looking for projects that, * are small-to-moderate-sized Haskell programs which you believe have regressed in compile time in the last few GHC releases * have minimal build dependencies, in the ideal case none outside of the standard GHC boot libraries * can be licensed for use under 3-clause BSD In some cases we may also be able to make use of examples with a few library dependencies that are necessary to demonstrate the performance issue (for instance, a suspected issue stemming from stream fusion requiring Conduit). For performance issues exhibiting non-linear scaling in some quantity (e.g. the size of a type in the program), it would be extremely helpful if the testcase exposed a "knob" demonstrating this scaling. So, if you would like to see your program's compilation time improve in GHC 8.2, put some time into reducing it to something minimal, submit it to us via a Trac ticket, and let us know in this thread. Thanks for your help! Cheers, - Ben

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RFC: Removing the `-hb` profiling option
by Erik de Castro Lopo 06 May '16

06 May '16

Hi all, After a bit of rather tedious and frustrating debugging I came to the realisation that the code for the `-hb` profiling option is not thread safe. See https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/12019 This gives us an opportunity to simply remove it instead of fixing it. If there is anyone that thinks this future is really useful (ie more useful than the other profiling modes) then I'm willing to fix it. But if noone would miss it. I'd much rather remove it. Thoughts? Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/

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Re: [Maintainer needed] Actively maintained Haddock are happy Haddock
by Ben Gamari 06 May '16

06 May '16

Sebastian <arnaudpourseb(a)gmail.com> writes: > Hello Ben, > Hi Sebastian, Sorry for the belated response. > If that's ok I'd be happy to take over the maintenance of Haddock. > Sure, that would be great. I can give you the keys in a bit. Cheers, - Ben

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