bug documentation [was: Re: problem compiling with profiling]

[Simon Marlow]

Frederik Eaton wrote:
>>Template Haskell doesn't work with profiling, I'm afraid (for the
>>same reason that you can't load profiled object code into GHCi). I
>>thought we had an open bug on this, but I couldn't find one, so I
>>just created one:
>>
>>http://cvs.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/651
> 
> 
> Writing a large program which relies on some library or some feature
> of ghc that is expected to be stable, or at least to not conflict with
> other features; and then finding out after considerable effort has
> been spent that there is some catch which prevents my program from
> being as useful as anticipated, or even useful at all - this is a
> frustrating experience that I've had several times now.
> 
> I think it might be reasonable to expect the ghc documentation to
> contain better and more up-to-date information about what is and what
> isn't currently supported, so that users can avoid wasting their time
> as I have. As grateful as I am for the work that is being carried on
> here, sometimes I would like to be able to see projects through to
> completion without becoming involved in the ghc development process. 
> Furthermore, it seems that better documentation of open bugs could
> also be of use to people who *do* want to become involved...

I hear your frustration, and I sympathise.

I've updated the known bugs section on the template haskell wiki to be 
more useful: http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/TemplateHaskell, and I've 
bumped the priority of the TH/profiling bug.

You want an easy way to find out what works and what doesn't, which is 
quite reasonable.  This is something we should try to improve.  The 
current situation is:

   - long term defects are described in the User's Guide, in the
     "Known bugs and infelicities" section: 
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/bugs-and-infelicities.html

   - all other bugs that we know about are either:

      * in the bug tracker, or
      * on this mailing list, or
      * in someone's head.

It would be a huge improvement if we could put all these in one place. 
So from now on we'll try to record a ticket for every bug, even if we 
fix it immediately.  Unfortunately there isn't a way to query for "all 
the bugs, open or closed against version 6.4.1, or open against an older 
verison".  We could update the version of every open bug at each 
release, I suppose.  For now, this query gets you all the bugs in 6.4.1, 
open or closed:

http://cvs.haskell.org/trac/ghc/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&status=closed&version=6.4.1&order=priority

Cheers,
	Simon