[GHC] #8189: Default to infinite stack size?

[GHC]

#8189: Default to infinite stack size?
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        Reporter:  nh2         |            Owner:
            Type:  bug         |           Status:  new
        Priority:  normal      |        Milestone:
       Component:  Runtime     |          Version:  7.6.3
  System                       |         Keywords:
      Resolution:              |     Architecture:  Unknown/Multiple
Operating System:              |       Difficulty:  Easy (less than 1 hour)
  Unknown/Multiple             |       Blocked By:
 Type of failure:  Runtime     |  Related Tickets:
  crash                        |
       Test Case:              |
        Blocking:              |
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Comment (by simonmar):

 There are a few things I'm not completely happy with here.  By all means
 turn off the default stack limit, but the business with `allocateFail()`
 is misguided: `allocateFail()` will not return NULL.  It only returns NULL
 when there is a single request for memory greater than the maximum heap
 size, and (a) by default there's no maximum heap size, and (b) even if
 there was, it would be highly unlikely to be smaller than the stack chunk
 size (32K).  Did anyone test this?  The `heapOverflow()` test in
 `allocate()` is purely optional, see #1791.

 The typical behaviour when someone writes a program that accidentally
 blows the stack will be for the machine to grind to a halt swapping, until
 the OS finally kills something (hopefully the right process).  We have
 this behaviour for space leaks now, so I guess it's no worse to have it
 for stack leaks too.  An actual "out of memory" error is rare, typically
 it happens when you try to allocate an array larger than the memory size,
 or something like that.

 Austin: could you back this out please, and let's discuss it some more.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8189#comment:12>
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