[ghc-steering-committee] #512: NoFieldSelectors as datatype annotation, Recommendation: reject

[Arnaud Spiwack]

It seems to me that the only motivation for this proposal is for Template
Haskell generated code. So maybe we can imagine an alternative that is
purely in Template Haskell, without any syntax. Which would avoid the
concerns about parsing pragmas*. Maybe there is room, in this space, for a
generic mechanism, but I don't think that we'd need this: it makes sense to
let the Template Haskell slice decide if a record it defines generates
selectors or not.

That being said, I'm personally ok with the proposal as it stands, I think
it makes sense. But it's likely that a pure Template Haskell solution may
be both more forward compatible and easier to implement (at least, based on
Vlad estimate, who knows this part of the code, I'm inclined to believe
so). As there doesn't seem to be any particular motivation beyond Template
Haskell, I'd be ok if we made this counter-proposal.

I don't think counterargument 4 is something we can oppose: it is
theoretically possible to define the doppelgänger record in a separate
module, but we know it won't happen. Matt Parsons mentions the Esqueleto
library, it is obvious that the library will prefer using a silly name for
record fields  rather than ask its users to move definitions to another
module and the library will be right: it is less obnoxious.

All in all, I think that the proposal is quite reasonable, and would open
space in the design of Template-Haskell based libraries.

* For the record, I don't think that we can claim that pragmas can be
ignored semantically. The OVERLAPPING pragma is a counter-example. Maybe
more acutely: the LANGUAGE pragma. So I don't agree with counterargument 3.

On Wed, 30 Nov 2022 at 22:18, Adam Gundry <adam at well-typed.com> wrote:

> On 30/11/2022 20:37, Joachim Breitner wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Am Mittwoch, dem 30.11.2022 um 19:28 +0000 schrieb Adam Gundry:
> >> What do you think?
> >
> > my initial feeling about `language … where …` is that it is a modifer
> > of sorts, however
> >   * with a syntax that may not scale well (hard to target anything
> >     but a whole set of declarations)
> >   * looks like it could support any kind of language extension, when
> >     it probably doesn’t make sense for all of them.
> > so may not gain much over implementing (parts) of the modifier syntax.
>
> Well, I find it hard to imagine really needing to enable an extension
> for anything smaller than a declaration group. On the other hand, I not
> infrequently want to enable particular extensions only for a few
> specific definitions (AllowAmbiguousTypes comes to mind).
>
> As I understand it, modifiers need to be type-checked before they have
> meaning assigned. This presumably means they cannot change the behaviour
> of the parser, whereas an explicit "language ... where ..." construct
> could do so. And I don't think modifiers can scope over a declaration
> group, only a single declaration?
>
> I agree that we wouldn't necessarily support *all* language extensions
> locally, but I think the list for which this fundamentally does not make
> sense is relatively short (the main ones that come to mind are
> import-related extensions such as ExplicitNamespaces). Others might be
> hard to specify/implement (e.g. Safe Haskell seems tricky) but we could
> simply not support them locally.
>
>
> > ...
> >
> > Or we revive local modules, and use that as a then natural way of
> > scoping language pragmas…
>
> There's clearly a relationship to local modules, but that seems like
> more complexity than we need for the problem at hand. I don't see why we
> shouldn't add "language ... where ..." now, then potentially later
> support local (or top-level!) modules with
>
>    language Blah where
>      module M where
>        ...
>
> After all, {-# LANGUAGE #-} pragmas violate the principle that pragmas
> shouldn't change semantics. ;-)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Adam
>
>
> --
> Adam Gundry, Haskell Consultant
> Well-Typed LLP, https://www.well-typed.com/
>
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> 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX, England
>
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