failure implementing :next command in ghci
Peter Hercek
phercek at gmail.com
Mon Apr 20 12:06:34 EDT 2009
Simon Marlow wrote:
> Peter Hercek wrote:
>> The proposed meaning for :next
>>
>> Lets mark dynamic stack size at a breakpoint (at which we issue
>> :next) as breakStackSize and its selected expression as breakSpan.
>> Then :next would single step till any of these is true:
>> 1) current dynamic stack size is smaller than breakStackSize
>> 2) current dynamic stack size is equal to breakStackSize and the
>> current selected expression is not a subset of breakSpan
>
> So what happens if the stack shrinks and then grows again between two
> breakpoints? Presumably :next wouldn't notice.
Yes, if there is no breakpoint in between I would not notice. I did not
expect this can happen though. I thought that to add a frame on the
stack this must be done within an expression (which is going to be
forced) and the expression should be a breakpoint location. If it is so
negligible that it does not have a breakpoint location associated then
even the things it is calling should be negligible.
Where is an error in this?
> I think you'd be better off implementing this with a special stack
> frame, so that you can guarantee to notice when the current "context"
> has been exited.
This would be robust but I do not have knowledge to do it yet. If I
understand you correctly this means that before executing a BCO which we
are going to break at, we must prepare for a possible :next. So
regardless whether :next is going to be issued by the user or not we
would add a frame which represents a return to a function which:
a) if user issued :next it enables all breakpoints so that we stop at
the next breakpoint
b) if user did not issue a break it would not do anything (just return)
We could decide not to insert the frame when we are only tracing. But if
I would want to track a simulated dynamic stack I would need to insert
this stack frame at the start of each breakpoint (when dynamic stack
tracing would be on). Does not sound that good.
>> I hope the above would make good sense but I do not really know since
>> maybe rts does some funny things with stack sometimes. If you think
>> the proposed behavior is garbage let me know why so that I do not
>> waste more time with this :)
>
> Yes the RTS does do "funny thing" with the stack sometimes. The stack
> can shrink as a result of adjacent update frames being coalesced
> ("stack squeezing").
OK, so it looks like either switching off the squeezing (if shrinking
and growing stack between breakpoints/ticks is not such an issue), or
inserting a stack frame.
Does the "stack squeezing" happen during garbage collection?
Thanks,
Peter.
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