GHC core representation

[Josef Svenningsson]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:

> | * I would like to make GHC generate only the core file and
> | the hi file, nothing more. However, I haven't found a way of
> | making GHC stop after outputting the hi file.  Being able to
> | do this is useful in some other cases as well;  I sometimes
> | look at the raw core that comes is printed with the -ddump*
> | flags. It is often the case that I don't want anything to be
> | generated then.
>
> This would be a Good Thing and not too hard.
> How would you like to specify where to stop?  "After the last
> blob of debug output" might be a reasonable answer, but
> we definitely also want to be able to carry on.  Yet another flag?
>
Another flag is probarbly what I want here. Stopping "after the last blob
of debug output" would certainly be a useful one. Another alternative is
"after producing .hi file" which potentially could be useful even when
we're not producing any debug output. The latter should be even easier to
implement.
I'm happy with either one.

> GHC is controlled by a little script, one "instruction" of which is
> "dump the ext-core".   I have long wanted to externalise the script
> file so that you can write it youself; just one more thing we have
> not done yet.
>
Aha. Sounds cool. I guess if you want to make GHC popular as a tool of
which people can use bits and pieces then such a feature would be really
appreciated. At least, I would find such a feature useful.

Cheers,

	/Josef