slow load and typecheck

[Sam Halliday]

Hello all,

I am writing an interactive tool using the ghc api. It is able to load
and typecheck a source file in a user's package.

I obtain the flags that cabal uses to compile the user's package via the
hie-bios trick, and I `parseDynamicFlagsCmdLine' them inside my tool,
then I `setTargets' all the home modules (with targetAllowObjCode=True).

I use HscNothing and NoLink because I only want access to the trees, I
don't want to produce any output files.

For the file that I wish to inspect, I `removeTarget' the module and
`addTarget` it again but this time providing the full path to the file
and don't allow object code.

Then I LoadUpTo and typecheck. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume
that the file under inspection only has a module definiton and no
imports or top levels.

Functionally, my code is working great and I am able to do what I want
with the typechecked tree.

However, load is very slow (~10 seconds user time) on large projects.
Here is a cpu time trace of my program (milliseconds):

  main              1
  parse flags      93
  load          20436
  typecheck     20437

I can enable a bit more ghc timing info via -Rghc-timings and I see

  !!! Chasing dependencies: finished in 157.20 milliseconds, allocated
      528.112 megabytes

This seems fine, anything sub-second is ok.

But then I see a bunch of home modules in CodeGen that I was not expecting:

   !!! CodeGen [My.Module.Dependency]:
       finished in 3335.62 milliseconds, allocated 270.615 megabytes

So it looks like the targetAllowObjCode is being ignored... is there any
way to force it? Actually I'd prefer to fail fast than to ever compile
or codegen a dependency module.


I know that it should be possible to load the module a lot faster
because if I make a small change in the file under inspection and ask
cabal to recompile the module it is super fast (less than a second).

Could somebody who understands how incremental/partial compiles work
please help me out?


PS: If this textual description is confusing, I could put together a
minimal reproduction and example project but it will take me some time
to do that.

-- 
Best regards,
Sam
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