Malcolm Wallace wrote:
Simon Marlow wrote:
The compiler finds the file because you tell it what the filename is. That's the way it works now, and if I understand correctly Malcolm isn't suggesting we change that (and I agree).
Yes, that's what I had in mind. My guiding design principle is that I want absolutely minimal changes to the current way of doing things, while still managing to gain new expressiveness in the module namespace.
There are really two issues here:
* how do you find a module to compile in the first place (not an issue for interpreters, only for batch compilers). Just run the compiler giving it the filename.
Exactly. When the dot-extended module name is explicitly given, in full, in the source file's "module" header, then it doesn't matter where the compiler is invoked from.
cd .; ghc -c A/B/C/D.hs cd A; ghc -c B/C/D.hs cd A/B; ghc -c C/D.hs CD A/B/C; ghc -c D.hs
are all equivalent. No special flags are required to tell the compiler that the "root" of this tree is at the parent of A. The source file contains everything the compiler needs to know.
Yes, it is easy to find a module file given the filename, but how does the compiler find modules that this module imports? -- Christian Brolin