- Glasgow-haskell-users

ANNOUNCE: GHC version 7.8.2
by Austin Seipp 14 Apr '14

14 Apr '14

============================================================== The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 7.8.2 ============================================================== The GHC Team is pleased to announce a new patchlevel release of GHC, 7.8.2. This is an important bugfix release relative to 7.8.1, so we highly recommend upgrading from 7.8.1. The full release notes are here: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.8.2/html/users_guide/release-7-8-2.html How to get it ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The easy way is to go to the web page, which should be self-explanatory: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ We supply binary builds in the native package format for many platforms, and the source distribution is available from the same place. Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your system isn't available yet, please try again later. Background ~~~~~~~~~~ Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language. GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell. Included is an optimising compiler generating good 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 (C, whatever). GHC is distributed under a BSD-style open source license. A wide variety of Haskell related resources (tutorials, libraries, specifications, documentation, compilers, interpreters, references, contact information, links to research groups) are available from the Haskell home page (see below). On-line GHC-related resources ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web: GHC home page http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ GHC developers' home page http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Haskell home page http://www.haskell.org/ Supported Platforms ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The list of platforms we support, and the people responsible for them, is here: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Platforms http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/CodeOwners 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 accessing our source code repository, and getting started with hacking on GHC, are available from the GHC's developer's site run by Trac: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Mailing lists ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use the web interfaces at http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on www.haskell.org; for the full list, see http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ Some GHC developers hang out on #haskell on IRC, 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 Hashes & Signatures ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Included in this email is a signed copy of the SHA256 hashes for the tarballs, using my GPG key (keyid 0x3B58D86F). -- Regards, Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/

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can't load .so/.DLL - undefined symbol
by Henning Thielemann 11 Apr '14

11 Apr '14

I am trying to understand the following linker message. I have started GHCi, loaded a program and try to run it: Main> main ... Loading package poll-0.0 ... linking ... done. Loading package alsa-seq-0.6.0.3 ... can't load .so/.DLL for: /var/cabal/lib/x86_64-linux-ghc-7.8.0.20140228/alsa-seq-0.6.0.3/libHSalsa-seq-0.6.0.3-ghc7.8.0.20140228.so (/var/cabal/lib/x86_64-linux-ghc-7.8.0.20140228/alsa-seq-0.6.0.3/libHSalsa-seq-0.6.0.3-ghc7.8.0.20140228.so: undefined symbol: alsazmseqzm0zi6zi0zi3_SystemziPosixziPoll_zdfStorableFd_closure) I assume that GHCi wants to say the following: The instance Storable Fd defined in module System.Posix.Poll cannot be found in the shared object file of the alsa-seq package. That's certainly true because that module is in the package 'poll' and not in 'alsa-seq'. But 'alsa-seq' imports 'poll'. What might be the problem? It's a rather big example that fails here, whereas the small examples in alsa-seq package work. Thus I first like to know what the message really means, before investigating further. I installed many packages at once with cabal-install using a single build directory, like: $ cabal install --builddir=/tmp/dist --with-ghc=ghc7.8.0.20140228 poll alsa-seq pkg1 pkg2 pkg3 ... ? Can this cause problems?

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GHC 7.8.1: Many haddock-related complaints from 'ghc-pkg check'
by Conal Elliott 10 Apr '14

10 Apr '14

I installed the binary distribution of GHC 7.8.1 for Mac OS this morning, cabal-installed a few packages, and now I get a *lot* of warnings about missing .haddock files: bash-3.2$ ghc-pkg check Warning: haddock-interfaces: /Users/conal/.cabal/share/doc/x86_64-osx-ghc-7.8.1/uniplate-1.6.12/html/uniplate.haddock doesn't exist or isn't a file Warning: haddock-interfaces: /Users/conal/.cabal/share/doc/x86_64-osx-ghc-7.8.1/polyparse-1.9/html/polyparse.haddock doesn't exist or isn't a file Warning: haddock-interfaces: /Users/conal/.cabal/share/doc/x86_64-osx-ghc-7.8.1/ghc-syb-utils-0.2.1.2/html/ghc-syb-utils.haddock doesn't exist or isn't a file Warning: haddock-interfaces: /Users/conal/.cabal/share/doc/x86_64-osx-ghc-7.8.1/constraints-0.3.5/html/constraints.haddock doesn't exist or isn't a file Warning: haddock-html: /Users/conal/.cabal/share/doc/x86_64-osx-ghc-7.8.1/constraints-0.3.5/html doesn't exist or isn't a directory Warning: haddock-interfaces: /Users/conal/.cabal/share/doc/x86_64-osx-ghc-7.8.1/newtype-0.2/html/newtype.haddock doesn't exist or isn't a file Warning: haddock-html: /Users/conal/.cabal/share/doc/x86_64-osx-ghc-7.8.1/newtype-0.2/html doesn't exist or isn't a directory ... Expected behavior? Avoidable? Fixable? Thanks, - Conal

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7.8.1 cabal install of vector package (dependent on primitive package) fails
by Vivian McPhail 10 Apr '14

10 Apr '14

Hi, Ubuntu 12.04, 64 bit x86, ghc 7.8.1 gives the following: # cabal install --global vector ... [ 5 of 19] Compiling Data.Vector.Fusion.Stream.Monadic ( Data/Vector/Fusion/Stream/Monadic.hs, dist/build/Data/Vector/Fusion/Stream/Monadic.o ) Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done. Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done. Loading package base ... linking ... done. Loading package primitive-0.5.2.1 ... <command line>: can't load .so/.DLL for: libHSprimitive-0.5.2.1.so (libHSprimitive-0.5.2.1.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory) cabal: Error: some packages failed to install: vector-0.10.9.1 failed during the building phase. The exception was: ExitFailure 1 Cheers, Vivian

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] ANNOUNCE: GHC version 7.8.1
by Kazu Yamamoto 10 Apr '14

10 Apr '14

>> * Massive scalability improvements to the I/O manager > > Just a brief note from the front lines - I recompiled a heavily threaded > program with (a recent pre-release) of 7.8.1 and got a 10% performance > increase over 7.6.3. Nothing like free lunches - so thanks again for > the great work! Did you run you program on a multicore system? If so, did you specify +RTS -N<x> option? If your program uses MVar heavily, you need to re-design your program. For more information, please read: http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2014/01/new-fast-logger --Kazu

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ANNOUNCE: GHC version 7.8.1
by Austin Seipp 09 Apr '14

09 Apr '14

============================================================== The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 7.8.1 ============================================================== The GHC Team is pleased to announce a new major release of GHC. There have been a number of significant changes since the last major release, including: * New type-system features * Closed type families * Role checking * An improved solver for type naturals * Better support for cross compilation * Full iOS support * Massive scalability improvements to the I/O manager * Dynamic linking for GHCi * Several language improvements * Pattern synonyms * Overloaded list syntax * Kind-polymorphic 'Typeable' class * A new parallel --make mode * Preliminary SIMD intrinsic support * A brand-new low level code generator * Many bugfixes and other performance improvements. The full release notes are here: http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.8.1/html/users_guide/release-7-8-1.html How to get it ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The easy way is to go to the web page, which should be self-explanatory: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ We supply binary builds in the native package format for many platforms, and the source distribution is available from the same place. Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your system isn't available yet, please try again later. Background ~~~~~~~~~~ Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language. GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell. Included is an optimising compiler generating good 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 (C, whatever). GHC is distributed under a BSD-style open source license. A wide variety of Haskell related resources (tutorials, libraries, specifications, documentation, compilers, interpreters, references, contact information, links to research groups) are available from the Haskell home page (see below). On-line GHC-related resources ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web: GHC home page http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ GHC developers' home page http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Haskell home page http://www.haskell.org/ Supported Platforms ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The list of platforms we support, and the people responsible for them, is here: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/TeamGHC 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 accessing our source code repository, and getting started with hacking on GHC, are available from the GHC's developer's site run by Trac: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Mailing lists ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use the web interfaces at http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on www.haskell.org; for the full list, see http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ Some GHC developers hang out on #haskell on IRC, 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 Hashes & Signatures ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Included in this email is a signed copy of the SHA256 hashes for the tarballs, using my GPG key (keyid 0x3B58D86F). -- Regards, Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/

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GHC API: getting the unfolding of a "strange" Id
by Christiaan Baaij 04 Apr '14

04 Apr '14

Dear list, I'm using the GHC API to get Core Expressions from haskell interface (.hi) files, and have encountered a strange kind of 'Id' for which I can't seem to get the unfolding: The properties of this 'Id' are the following: - varName: $fNumFixed2 - IdDetails: VannillaId - Pretty print of IdInfo.inlinePragInfo: [Always] - IdInfo.unfoldingInfo: NoUnfolding The source file which gives rise to this 'Id' is: https://github.com/christiaanb/clash-prelude/blob/master/src/CLaSH/Sized/Fi… As you can see, the file is compiled with: -fexpose-all-unfoldings The '$f' prefix seems to indicate that the 'Id' is a Dictionary Function, so I was expecting its 'IdInfo.unfoldingInfo' to be a 'DFunUnfolding'. Given that pretty printing 'inlinePragInfo' gives me '[Always]', I would expect to have a usable 'Unfolding' in general. How can GHC inline the body of this 'Id' if it has no unfolding? Also, if I compile the file with "-O0 -fno-omit-interface-pragmas", the $fNumFixed2 'Id' is no longer included in the interface file. At positions where "$fNumFixed2" was originally used, a equality constraint can eventually be found: Using -O: (CLaSH.Sized.Fixed.$fNumFixed2 @(GHC.TypeLits.+ 4 4) Using -O0 -fno-omit-interface-pragmas: (GHC.Types.Eq# @GHC.Types.Bool @(GHC.TypeLits.<=? 1 (GHC.TypeLits.+ 4 4)) @GHC.Types.True _CO_) So my question is, what kind of "strange" 'Id' is this $fNumFixed2? And how can I get the Core expression for this 'Id' from the interface file? And if I can't get it from the interface file, is there a straightforward way to generate it from the 'Id'? Cheers, Christiaan

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Bang Patterns
by Dan Doel 03 Apr '14

03 Apr '14

Greetings, I've been thinking about bang patterns as part of implementing our own Haskell-like compiler here, and have been testing out GHC's implementation to see how it works. I've come to one case that seems like it doesn't work how I think it should, or how it is described, and wanted to ask about it. Specifically, consider: case Nothing of !(~(Just x)) -> 5 Nothing -> 12 Now, the way I'd expect this to work, and how I think the spec says it works, is that my Nothing is evaluated, and then the irrefutable ~(Just x) matches Nothing, giving a result of 5. In fact, GHC warns about overlapping patterns for this. However, this actually evaluates to 12, meaning that !(~p) appears to cancel out and be equivalent to p. It seems to me this might be a side effect of the logic used to implement 'let !p = ...', but I'm not certain. So, my question is whether this is intentional. If it is, then the bang patterns description should probably mention it, since it's subtly different than the rest of the specification. Also the warning should be removed, because there is no overlapping in the above case statement. If it is unintentional, we should probably decide either to make it intentional (and perform the above changes), or to change the implementation. :) Cheers, -- Dan

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Eta Reduction
by Dan Doel 02 Apr '14

02 Apr '14

In the past year or two, there have been multiple performance problems in various areas related to the fact that lambda abstraction is not free, though we tend to think of it as so. A major example of this was deriving of Functor. If we were to derive Functor for lists, we would end up with something like: instance Functor [] where fmap _ [] = [] fmap f (x:xs) = f x : fmap (\y -> f y) xs This definition is O(n^2) when fully evaluated,, because it causes O(n) eta expansions of f, so we spend time following indirections proportional to the depth of the element in the list. This has been fixed in 7.8, but there are other examples. I believe lens, [1] for instance, has some stuff in it that works very hard to avoid this sort of cost; and it's not always as easy to avoid as the above example. Composing with a newtype wrapper, for instance, causes an eta expansion that can only be seen as such at the core level. The obvious solution is: do eta reduction. However, this is not operationally sound currently. The problem is that seq is capable of telling the difference between the following two expressions: undefined \x -> undefined x The former causes seq to throw an exception, while the latter is considered defined enough to not do so. So, if we eta reduce, we can cause terminating programs to diverge if they make use of this feature. Luckily, there is a solution. Semantically one would usually identify the above two expressions. While I do believe one could construct a semantics that does distinguish them, it is not the usual practice. This suggests that there is a way to not distinguish them, perhaps even including seq. After all, the specification of seq is monotone and continuous regardless of whether we unify ⊥ with \x -> ⊥ x or insert an extra element for the latter. The currently problematic case is function spaces, so I'll focus on it. How should: seq : (a -> b) -> c -> c act? Well, other than an obvious bottom, we need to emit bottom whenever our given function is itself bottom at every input. This may first seem like a problem, but it is actually quite simple. Without loss of generality, let us assume that we can enumerate the type a. Then, we can feed these values to the function, and check their results for bottom. Conal Elliot has prior art for this sort of thing with his unamb [2] package. For each value x :: a, simply compute 'f x `seq` ()' in parallel, and look for any successes. If we ever find one, we know the function is non-bottom, and we can return our value of c. If we never finish searching, then the function must be bottom, and seq should not terminate, so we have satisfied the specification. Now, some may complain about the enumeration above. But this, too, is a simple matter. It is well known that Haskell programs are denumerable. So it is quite easy to enumerate all Haskell programs that produce a value, check whether that value has the type we're interested in, and compute said value. All of this can be done in Haskell. Thus, every Haskell type is programatically enumerable in Haskell, and we can use said enumeration in our implementation of seq for function types. I have discussed this with Russell O'Connor [3], and he assures me that this argument should be sufficient even if we consider semantic models of Haskell that contain values not denoted by any Haskell program, so we should be safe there. The one possible caveat is that this implementation of seq is not operationally uniform across all types, so the current fully polymorphic type of seq may not make sense. But moving back to a type class based approach isn't so bad, and this time we will have a semantically sound backing, instead of just having a class with the equivalent of the current magic function in it. Once this machinery is in place, we can eta reduce to our hearts' content, and not have to worry about breaking semantics. We'd no longer put the burden on programmers to use potentially unsafe hacks to avoid eta expansions. I apologize for not sketching an implementation of the above algorithm, but I'm sure it should be elementary enough to make it into GHC in the next couple versions. Everyone learns about this type of thing in university computer science programs, no? Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Cheers, -- Dan [1] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/lens [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/unamb [3] http://r6.ca/

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Buildbots
by harry 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

It having been suggested that a buildbot for Windows may be needed, and it being possible that I may receive permission from management for setting one up in my department's server room, I set about attempting to discover what this actually entails. A Google search led me to https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/BuildBot, which tells me that "Buildbot is currently down, and we are working on a replacement. See Builder for more details." If I follow the 'down' link , I get to the GHC status April 2010 page, which says that buildbot has been abandoned, suggesting that the page should be deleted. Could someone confirm before I go ahead and delete it? The Builder page has clear instructions on how to set up a build slave, and a link to the build results. The build results contains an assortment of dud links and builds from August and earlier. What is the current state of automated builds? -- View this message in context: http://haskell.1045720.n5.nabble.com/Buildbots-tp5746770.html Sent from the Haskell - Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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