Landing Backpack in HEAD

[Simon Peyton Jones]

I'm supportive of doing this, and am working with Edward on it. Yell if you object.

Simon

|  -----Original Message-----
|  From: ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of
|  Edward Z. Yang
|  Sent: 11 August 2016 20:07
|  To: ghc-devs <ghc-devs at haskell.org>
|  Subject: Landing Backpack in HEAD
|  
|  Hello friends,
|  
|  I'm hoping to land Backpack (the patch is two years in the making
|  now!) for GHC 8.2, even though 8.2 is intended to be a stabilization
|  and performance release.  In this email, I will make the case that the
|  Backpack patch is relatively self-contained and will not affect non-
|  Backpack users, and explain how you might be affected by the patch.
|  The most recent patchset can be found at
|  https://github.com/ezyang/ghc/tree/ghc-backpack ; look for "The
|  Backpack patch" in the commit log, since I plan on squashing these
|  commits before committing.
|  
|  OK, here is what is in the patchset that affects non-Backpack users:
|  
|      - The primary, overarching change is that there is now
|        a distinction between "semantic" and "identity" modules.
|        This solves a problem with hsig files:  suppose
|        you have A.hsig which defines data T in package p.
|        The resulting A.hi is most accurately identified
|        as p[A=<A>]:A; however, the Name for T should be <A>.T,
|        not p[A=<A>]:A.T.  The former is an identity module
|        (it *identifies* interfaces), whereas the latter is a semantic
|        module (it is what is used in names).  Without Backpack,
|        these two identities are always the same.  There are a number
|        of places in the existing codepaths where we have to
|        distinguish between the two concepts (sometimes you
|        want semantic, sometimes you want identity); we DEFAULT
|        to the identity module but I fix a few cases where
|        semantic modules were desired instead.
|  
|      - UnitId is generalized to also record how a component
|        is instantiated (a mapping from module names to modules.)
|        Without Backpack this is blank and equivalent to the
|        existing UnitId.
|  
|      - Packages has been refactored to also handle Backpack `-unit-id`
|        flags, since we have to do some extra work to determine
|        what inherited signatures merge where.
|  
|      - The patch REVERTS all of the old support we had for hsig
|        files; -sig-of is no more.  spinda had mentioned that
|        Liquid Haskell used this in some cases, and I'm looking
|        at supporting *just* their particular use-case.
|  
|      - A new driver mode --backpack, which process test.bkp files.
|        This mode is used PURELY for testing, and end users
|        are not supposed to use it.  These all live in their own
|        modules (BkpSyn, DriverBkp) except for some modest,
|        convenient extensions to the lexer and parser to parse
|        multiple modules at once.
|  
|  The patch also comes with rewritten typechecking support for hsig
|  files, and instantiating indefinite packages on the fly, but these are
|  all standalone pieces of functionality which are not tied to any
|  existing compiler infrastructure.
|  
|  Thanks,
|  Edward
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