Possible runtime overhead of wrapping the IO monad?

[Chris Kuklewicz]

Brian Hulley wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm designing an API for a simple graphics window, and am trying to make
> the correct usage of the API functions explicit and visible to the type
> system by using different monads which ultimately just wrap the IO
> monad. For example, in a callback for rendering stuff to the screen,
> only operations in the RenderM monad are allowed, and when specifying
> vertex info for a primitive, only VertexM operations are allowed.
> 
> However I'm wondering if I can rely on all this monad stuff being
> optimized out at compile time. A sample monad is below:
> 
>   newtype VertexM a = VertexM (IO a)
> 
>   instance Monad VertexM where
>      VertexM x >>= fry = VertexM $ do
>          ax <- x
>          let VertexM y = fry ax
>          y
> 
>      return x = VertexM $ return x
> 
>   instance MonadIO VertexM where
>      liftIO = VertexM
> 

There should be no overhead for a newtype.  The above can be shortened to one line:

newtype VertexM a = VertexM (IO a) deriving (Functor,Monad,MonadIO)

(Needs ghc -fglasgow-exts, I expect)

> 
> Also, in:
> 
>   foreign import ccall duma_vertex3f :: Float -> Float -> Float -> IO ()
> 
>   vertex3f :: Float -> Float -> Float -> VertexM ()
>   vertex3f x y z = liftIO $ duma_vertex3f x y z
> 
> is there a penalty involved in calling vertex3f (from another module) or
> will the worker/wrapper optimization ensure that machine code in the
> other module just calls duma_vertex3f directly since the liftIO
> operation is just an irrelevance at the machine code level?

I doubt there is a penalty.

> 
> So far I've just been using ghc --make and not bothering about what kind
> of code is generated. Is there a flag I can use to get ghc to output the
> stg code (or something higher level than just x86 machine code itself)
> so I can look at the output to see what optimizations are being done?
> 
> Thanks, Brian.
> 

Yes, there are several ghc options:

-ddump-<insert keyword> is documented in
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/options-debugging.html
In particular -ddump-simpl has been helpful for some people, and you want
-ddump-stg, perhaps.