Superclass defaults

Jonas Almström Duregård jonas.duregard at chalmers.se
Fri Sep 2 19:19:38 CEST 2011


I agree. Option 2 FTW :)

The recent discussion concerns whether option 2 should eventually be
shifted to option 1. Everyone seems to agree that option 2 should be
used initially.

Regards,
Jonas

On 2 September 2011 18:55, Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com> wrote:
> Too many words!  I'm losing track.  What I'm proposing is Option 2 under "The design of the opt-out mechanism" on http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/DefaultSuperclassInstances
>
> I believe that meets everyone's goals:
>  * A warning encourages you to fix the client code
>  * But you can turn it off, and it's not fatal.
>
> Does anyone advocate something else?
>
> Simon
>
> | -----Original Message-----
> | From: glasgow-haskell-users-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:glasgow-haskell-users-
> | bounces at haskell.org] On Behalf Of Jonas Almström Duregård
> | Sent: 02 September 2011 16:50
> | To: Conor McBride
> | Cc: GHC users
> | Subject: Re: Superclass defaults
> |
> | > The question then comes down to whether that warning should ever be
> | > strengthened to an error.
> |
> | Indeed.
> |
> | > I agree that such a scenario is possible. The present situation gives
> | > no choice but to do things badly, but things often get done badly the
> | > first time around anyway. Perhaps I'm just grumpy, but I think we
> | > should aim to make bad practice erroneous where practicable. Once
> | > the mistake is no longer forced upon us, it becomes a mistake that
> | > deserves its penalty in labour. Silent pre-emption is bad practice and
> | > code which relies on it should be fixed: it's not good to misconstrue
> | > an instance declaration because you don't know which instance
> | > declarations are somewhere else. Nonmonotonic reasoning is always a
> | > bit scary.
> | >
> | > From a library design perspective, we should certainly try to get these
> | > hierarchical choices right when we add classes. I accept that it should
> | > be cheap to fix mistakes (especially when the mistake is lack of
> | > foresight. Sticking with the warning rather than the error reduces the
> | > price of this particular legacy fix at the cost of tolerating misleading
> | > code. I agree that the balance of this trade-off is with the warning,
> | > for the moment, but I expect it to shift over time towards the error.
> | > But if it's clear what the issue is, then we can at least keep it under
> | > review.
> |
> | I agree. Making bad practice erroneous is good, but its not really the
> | bad practice that raises the error here. You have no serious problems
> | until you try to change your bad design to a good one. Like you say it
> | should be cheap to fix mistakes.
> |
> | >> Will there be a solution to this dilemma that I have missed? Should
> | >> the client code be allowed opt-out from the superclass preemptively
> | >> before it is given a default? Won't that cause a similar perplexity?
> | >
> | > I don't know what you mean by this. Perhaps you could expand on it?
> |
> | What I'm trying to ask is if you can write compatible code that will
> | work across gradual changes of the compiler and the libraries.
> |
> | Suppose we have library with class C. In a newer version of the
> | library we add an intrinsic superclass S. Also suppose the compiler
> | implements option 1. Now the users of the library want to write code
> | that uses both C and S, and that's compatible with both the new and
> | the old library. From what I can tell there are three situations that
> | needs to be covered:
> |
> | 1) Old compiler - Old library
> | Here we need to specify both instances, and we cant hide the default S
> | instance because its not supported by the compiler. This also applies
> | for other situations where the client must use Haskell 2010 compatible
> | code.
> |
> | 2) New compiler - Old library
> | Here we also need to specify both instances.
> |
> | 3) New compiler - New library
> | We can either write both instances and hide the default or we can just
> | write an instance for C.
> |
> | Clearly code that covers situation 1 will never be compatible with situation 3.
> |
> | The question I was asking was if we are allowed to hide the default
> | instance of S in situation 2. In that case you can write compatible
> | code for situation 2 and 3. The possible confusion from this is that
> | you hide a default implementation thats not defined. Maybe it's not as
> | bad as overriding silently, but there is some room for error where you
> | think you have blocked a superclass instance but really you have just
> | blocked some completely unrelated class.
> |
> | Of course we can get compatibility across all three using CPP but I
> | really wish we won't need that.
> |
> | As time passes, situation 1 will become more rare, although situation
> | 2 and 3 can reoccur endlessly as new libraries are designed and
> | redesigned.
> |
> | Regards,
> | Jonas
> |
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