However, the new debugger in GHC must do something to get names of things, so perhaps the -prof hack is no longer needed?
I believe the debugger that Robert Ennals is working on tries to infer constructor names from the symbol table of the binary. Personally, I'd like to see debugging info placed in a separate segment of the binary, so it won't be loaded with the code but can be used by a debugger.
I wonder whether keeping the names of data constructors in info tables is expensive? I would have guessed not. (more debugging info such as function names and src locations is likely to be more expensive however). Anyway, would it be possible/feasible for GHC to keep names in info tables all the time, not just for profiling? At least for data-constructors? Cheers, Bernie.