[GHC] #8711: StaticValues language extension

[GHC]

#8711: StaticValues language extension
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
        Reporter:                    |            Owner:  facundo.dominguez
  facundo.dominguez                  |           Status:  new
            Type:  feature request   |        Milestone:
        Priority:  normal            |          Version:
       Component:  Compiler          |         Keywords:
      Resolution:                    |     Architecture:  Unknown/Multiple
Operating System:  Unknown/Multiple  |       Difficulty:  Project (more
 Type of failure:  None/Unknown      |  than a week)
       Test Case:                    |       Blocked By:
        Blocking:                    |  Related Tickets:  #8107
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Changes (by carter):

 * related:   => #8107


Comment:

 This is somewhat related to my own static data work in-progress.

 I think that with GHC 7.8, it'd be possible (and valuable) to prototype
 this proposal as a userland library. Theres a LOT of corner cases that
 would need to be very very precisely / throughly handled for this to be
 worth supporting in ghc proper, and I very strongly suspect that with the
 right (seemingly unrelated) extensions, it'd actually be quite feasible to
 make this feature request a user land library.

 namely: making sure that GHC API tooling for supporting dynamic loading
 and unloading of code works for this use case!
 see the ObjLink api
 http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/ghc-7.6.3/ObjLink.html
 and
 http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/ghc-7.6.3/DynamicLoading.html
 works or not.   Mind you, I'd recommend testing out the GHC HEAD / 7.8
 variant of the api, because there were a few known issues in 7.6.

 Theres also some ideas for doing idris style EDSL support (which would
 kinda look like doing statically typed quasiquoters for haskell
 expressions) that would support this and a few other use cases quite
 nicely I think.

 I understand and appreciate the end goal. I think that the current GHC
 APIs are enough to support this or something very close to it as a user
 land library.  I'd also say that it'd be instructive to have some very
 very concrete examples illustrating what (if anything) can't be done
 currently from a userland perspective. I know for a fact that a number of
 organizations are using the Obj Loading facilities, or abstractions on top
 thereof, such as  the hint lib http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hint to
 provide such "computation serialization".  These organizations include,
 but are not limited to Facebook and Soostone.

 If you have some examples that aren't viable with such an approach, and/or
 would be much much nicer in your proposed scheme, please share!

--
Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8711#comment:3>
GHC <http://www.haskell.org/ghc/>
The Glasgow Haskell Compiler