Reification is difficult for lots of reasons. But here is a trick that you might be able to use.

Break your program into pieces, where you split the use of decls you want to reify into two parts.

-------------------- d1 = [d| data T = ... |]

splice d1

---------------------

Then you have a meta-variable "d1" with the reified form, and the real data declaration because of the splice.

Tim Sheard

I definitely prefer your solution which just avoids reification, for one simple reason: it works ! Question is: is there any case where reification is indispensable or is this trick general ? (and then why bother with reification ?) However, I'm still not very happy with this solution, because (again) thinking of a library working on the reified declarations, then the part above has to be written by the "user". Thanks. -fr-