new-typeable, new cast?

Simon Peyton-Jones simonpj at microsoft.com
Tue Jul 23 21:11:13 CEST 2013


I'd suggest using "WithinType" as the argument to synifyType that's currently an error call in Haddock.Convert line 356

Simon

|  -----Original Message-----
|  From: Richard Eisenberg [mailto:eir at cis.upenn.edu]
|  Sent: 23 July 2013 15:12
|  To: Edward Kmett
|  Cc: José Pedro Magalhães; Dimitrios Vytiniotis; Simon Peyton-Jones; Stephanie
|  Weirich; josepedromagalhaes at gmail.com; libraries at haskell.org; Conor McBride
|  Subject: Re: new-typeable, new cast?
|  
|  Well, there was another surprise. Haddock can't deal with Proxy for some
|  reason. (It dies with the error "synifyKind". I looked but couldn't
|  figure out what was going on there.) I've posted a bug report on the
|  haddock Trac (http://trac.haskell.org/haddock/ticket/242), but
|  validation currently fails on the branch (data-proxy) with this work in
|  it. So, I can't merge with master.
|  
|  At this point, I'm going to wait until the haddock folks fix that bug,
|  then assuming all is well, I will merge.
|  
|  Richard
|  
|  
|  
|  On 2013-07-23 09:59, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
|  > I think that we really only need (eqT :: (Typeable a, Typeable b) =>
|  > Maybe (a :=: b)). All of the gcasts can be defined in terms of that
|  > function.
|  >
|  > However, I concretely propose (and plan to do) this: Leave gcast1 and
|  > gcast2 in and undeprecated. Simon is right that there is an infinite
|  > family of gcasts, and there may be no great reason to have gcast1 and
|  > gcast2 and none of the others, but there also doesn't seem to be a
|  > compelling reason to remove them (or deprecate them) and break code.
|  > In any case, this debate doesn't seem to be a good reason to hold up
|  > wrapping the rest of these details up, because we can always revisit
|  > and add or remove functions in the coming weeks. I'm not trying to
|  > ramrod my ideas through here, just trying to favor action over
|  > inaction -- anyone can feel free to come back and make edits after I
|  > push.
|  >
|  > Barring another surprise, I believe I'll push before lunch (in the UK).
|  >
|  > Richard
|  >
|  > On 2013-07-23 03:04, Edward Kmett wrote:
|  >> If we have gcast1 then can't the others just be applications of that
|  >> under various wrappers?
|  >>
|  >> In practice we should be able to implement gcast2 by working on a
|  >> single argument with a product kind, and so on and so forth, but we
|  >> need at least gcast1 as a base case.
|  >>
|  >> In theory this is the more fundamental operation, and gcast is
|  >> defineable in terms of gcast1 with a wrapper with a unit-kinded
|  >> argument, but I wouldn't want to invert the relationship.
|  >>
|  >> This is based on the same trick that Conor uses to show that a single
|  >> (poly-kinded) type argument is enough for all of the indexed monad
|  >> machinery, no matter how complicated it gets.
|  >>
|  >> TL;DR We only need gcast1, the others are window-dressing.
|  >>
|  >> -Edward
|  >>
|  >> On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 9:31 PM, Simon Peyton-Jones
|  >> <simonpj at microsoft.com> wrote:
|  >>
|  >>> Harump.  There is *still* an infinite family going on here, isn't
|  >>> there?
|  >>>
|  >>> gcast :: forall a b c. (Typeable a, Typeable b) => c a -> Maybe (c
|  >>> b)
|  >>>
|  >>> but what about this
|  >>>
|  >>> gcast_2 :: forall a b c d e. (Typeable a, Typeable b, Typeable d,
|  >>> Typeable e)
|  >>>              => c a b -> c d e
|  >>>
|  >>> Then, as you point out, we have gcast1 and 2 (etc).  And there are
|  >>> more.  What about
|  >>>
|  >>> gcast1' :: forall c t a a'. (Typeable a, Typeable a')
|  >>>        => c (t a) -> Maybe (c (t a'))
|  >>>
|  >>> One could imagine all sorts of combinations of bits that stay the
|  >>> same (and hence do not need to be Typeable) and bits that change
|  >>> (and hence do need to be Typable).
|  >>>
|  >>> As Edward says, all these functions can be polykinded, which makes
|  >>> them more useful, but there still seem too many of them.
|  >>>
|  >>> I wonder if we could instead make a combinatory library that lets
|  >>> us build these functions easily.  It think we are going to offer a
|  >>> function that computes an equality witness:
|  >>>
|  >>> mkEqWit :: (Typable a, Typeable b) => Maybe (EQ a b)
|  >>>
|  >>> Now we need to be able to compose witnesses:
|  >>>
|  >>> appEqWit :: Eq a b -> Eq c d -> Eq (a c) (b d)
|  >>> reflEqWit :: Eq a a
|  >>>
|  >>> Now, I think you can make all those other casts.
|  >>>
|  >>> Would that do the job better?
|  >>>
|  >>> Simon
|  >>>
|  >>> |  -----Original Message-----
|  >>> |  From: Richard Eisenberg [mailto:eir at cis.upenn.edu]
|  >>> |  Sent: 22 July 2013 10:20
|  >>> |  To: José Pedro Magalhães
|  >>> |  Cc: Dimitrios Vytiniotis; Simon Peyton-Jones; Stephanie
|  >>> Weirich;
|  >>> |  josepedromagalhaes at gmail.com; libraries at haskell.org; Conor
|  >>> McBride
|  >>> |  Subject: Re: new-typeable, new cast?
|  >>> |
|  >>>
|  >>> |  There seems to be a small tangle. The proposal includes
|  >>> deprecating
|  >>> |  gcast1 and gcast2 in favor of the poly-kinded gcast. But, there
|  >>> is a
|  >>> |  small discrepancy between these. Here are the type signatures:
|  >>> |
|  >>> |  > gcast :: forall a b c. (Typeable a, Typeable b) => c a ->
|  >>> Maybe (c b)
|  >>> |  > gcast1 :: forall c t t' a. (Typeable (t :: * -> *), Typeable
|  >>> t')
|  >>> |  >        => c (t a) -> Maybe (c (t' a))
|  >>> |
|  >>> |  The difference is that gcast1 does *not* require the variable
|  >>> `a` to be
|  >>> |  Typeable, whereas defining gcast1 = gcast does require this.
|  >>> Not
|  >>> |  requiring `a` to be Typeable seems correct to me, as the type
|  >>> signature
|  >>> |  of gcast1 requires both uses of `a` to be the same. But, gcast
|  >>> isn't
|  >>> |  smart enough to know that. Here are some ideas of how to
|  >>> proceed:
|  >>> |
|  >>> |  - Keep gcast1 and gcast2 undeprecated.
|  >>> |  - Require clients to add more Typeable constraints (for
|  >>> example, in
|  >>> |  Data.Data) to get their code to compile with gcast.
|  >>> |  - Come up with some other workaround, but none is striking me
|  >>> at the
|  >>> |  moment.
|  >>> |
|  >>> |  Thoughts?
|  >>> |
|  >>> |  Richard
|  >>> |
|  >>> |  On 2013-07-22 09:44, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
|  >>> |  > I was waiting to respond to Shachaf's email saying "pushed",
|  >>> but
|  >>> |  > instead, I have to say "currently validating".
|  >>> |  >
|  >>> |  > Expect this by the end of the day. Sorry it's taken so long!
|  >>> |  >
|  >>> |  > Richard
|  >>> |  >
|  >>> |  > On 2013-07-22 09:23, José Pedro Magalhães wrote:
|  >>> |  >> Thanks for bringing this up again. This was started in my
|  >>> data-proxy
|  >>> |  >> branch of base [1],
|  >>> |  >> but never really finished. We definitely want to have this
|  >>> in 7.8, and
|  >>> |  >> I think there's
|  >>> |  >>  only some minor finishing work to do (check if we have all
|  >>> the
|  >>> |  >> instances we want,
|  >>> |  >> document, etc.). Perhaps you can look through what's there
|  >>> already,
|  >>> |  >> and what you
|  >>> |  >> think is missing? I'm more than happy to accept contributing
|  >>> patches
|  >>> |  >> too :-)
|  >>> |  >>
|  >>> |  >> Thanks,
|  >>> |  >> Pedro
|  >>> |  >>
|  >>> |  >> On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 3:09 AM, Shachaf Ben-Kiki
|  >>> <shachaf at gmail.com>
|  >>> |  >> wrote:
|  >>> |  >>
|  >>> |  >>> On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:12 AM, José Pedro Magalhães
|  >>> |  >>> <jpm at cs.uu.nl> wrote:
|  >>> |  >>>> Hi,
|  >>> |  >>>>
|  >>> |  >>>> On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 4:51 PM, Richard Eisenberg
|  >>> |  >>> <eir at cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
|  >>> |  >>>>>
|  >>> |  >>>>> Unless I'm missing something, this all looks very
|  >>> |  >>> straightforward. The
|  >>> |  >>>>> implementation is there, already, in the guise of (gcast
|  >>> Refl).
|  >>> |  >>> We would
|  >>> |  >>>>> just shuffle the definitions around a bit. Am I indeed
|  >>> missing
|  >>> |  >>> something?
|  >>> |  >>>>
|  >>> |  >>>>
|  >>> |  >>>> I think that is the case indeed. Though I agree that it
|  >>> would be
|  >>> |  >>> a nice
|  >>> |  >>>> addition to Data.Typeable.
|  >>> |  >>>>
|  >>> |  >>>>
|  >>> |  >>>
|  >>> |  >>> This thread is a few months old now, but it looks like
|  >>> people were
|  >>> |  >>> generally in favor of adding (gcast Refl) to Data.Typeable.
|  >>> I've
|  >>> |  >>> used
|  >>> |  >>> it in real code in at least one place since then (where I
|  >>> just
|  >>> |  >>> defined
|  >>> |  >>> it locally). It doesn't look like it's actually been added,
|  >>> though
|  >>> |  >>> --
|  >>> |  >>> is it planned to go into HEAD eventually?
|  >>> |  >>>
|  >>> |  >>>     Shachaf
|  >>> |  >>
|  >>> |  >>
|  >>> |  >>
|  >>> |  >> Links:
|  >>> |  >> ------
|  >>> |  >> [1] https://github.com/ghc/packages-base/tree/data-proxy [1]
|  >>> |  >
|  >>> |  > _______________________________________________
|  >>> |  > Libraries mailing list
|  >>> |  > Libraries at haskell.org
|  >>> |  > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries [2]
|  >>>
|  >>> _______________________________________________
|  >>> Libraries mailing list
|  >>> Libraries at haskell.org
|  >>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries [2]
|  >>
|  >>
|  >>
|  >> Links:
|  >> ------
|  >> [1] https://github.com/ghc/packages-base/tree/data-proxy
|  >> [2] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries
|  >
|  > _______________________________________________
|  > Libraries mailing list
|  > Libraries at haskell.org
|  > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/libraries



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