Debugging GHC with GHCi

[Thomas Jakway]

I want to be able to load certain GHC modules in interpreted mode in 
ghci so I can set breakpoints in them.  I have tests in the testsuite 
that are compiled by inplace/bin/ghc-stage2 with -package ghc.  I can 
load the tests with ghc-stage2 --interactive -package ghc but since ghc 
is compiled I can only set breakpoints in the tests themselves.  Loading 
the relevant files by passing them as absolute paths to :l loads them 
but ghci doesn't stop at the breakpoints placed in them (I'm guessing 
because ghci doesn't realize that the module I just loaded is meant to 
replace the compiled version in -package ghc).

So if I use

inplace/bin/ghc-stage2 --interactive -package ghc mytest.hs
then
:l abs/path/to/AsmCodeGen.hs

and set breakpoints, nothing happens.


Ideally I'd only have to load the module I'm debugging (and it's 
dependencies?) but if that isn't possible how would I get ghci to load 
all of GHC in interpreted mode (intead of using -package ghc)?

Currently I'm using trace & friends to do printf-style debugging but 
it's definitely not ideal.

-Thomas Jakway