profiling and backtracing blues

[Ranjit Jhala]

Dear Simon,

I am indeed using the GHC API -- to crunch .hs source to CoreExpr,
which I then walk over to generate refinement type constraints and
so on.

In the past (with GHC 7.04) I *was* able to do some profiling -- to
hunt down a space leak. However, perhaps at that time I was not using 
hscCompileCoreExpr but something else? However, it could also be 
something silly like me not having built 7.4.1 with profiling support?

Specifically, here's I think, the key bits of GHC API code I'm using 
(from the link you sent, I suspect 2 is the problem) but any clues 
will be welcome!

1. To extract the mod_guts from the file "fn"
 
getGhcModGuts1 :: (GhcMonad m) => FilePath -> m ModGuts
getGhcModGuts1 fn = do
   liftIO $ deleteBinFiles fn 
   target <- guessTarget fn Nothing
   addTarget target
   load LoadAllTargets
   modGraph <- depanal [] True
   case find ((== fn) . msHsFilePath) modGraph of
     Just modSummary -> do
       mod_guts <- coreModule `fmap` (desugarModule =<< typecheckModule =<< parseModule modSummary)
       return mod_guts

2. To convert a raw string (e.g. "map" or "zipWith" to the corresponding Name inside GHC)
   I suspect this is the bit that touches the Ghci code -- because thats where I extracted 
   it from -- Is this what is causing the problem?

stringToNameEnv :: HscEnv -> String -> IO Name
stringToNameEnv env s 
    = do L _ rn         <- hscParseIdentifier env s
         (_, lookupres) <- tcRnLookupRdrName env rn
         case lookupres of
           Just (n:_) -> return n
           _          -> errorstar $ "Bare.lookupName cannot find name for: " ++ s

-Ranjit.



On Mar 14, 2012, at 3:59 AM, Simon Marlow wrote:

> On 13/03/2012 21:25, Ranjit Jhala wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I'm trying to use the nifty backtracing mechanism in GHC 74.
>> AFAICT, this requires everything be built with profiling on),
>> but as a consequence, I hit this:
>> 
>> 	"You can't call hscCompileCoreExpr in a profiled compiler"
>> 
>> Any hints on whether there are work-arounds?
> 
> Can you give more details about what you're trying to do?  Are you using the GHC API in some way?
> 
> I'm afraid there's something of a deep limitation in that the interpreter that is used by GHCi and Template Haskell doesn't work with profiling:
> 
>  http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3360
> 
> We think it is quite a lot of work to fix this.
> 
> Cheers,
> 	Simon