RFC: changes to -i flag for finding source files

[Simon Marlow]

Thanks for all the feedback.  Clearly opinion is divided on this one, so 
I'll sit on it and think it through some more.

Cheers,
Simon

On 25/04/2014 14:17, Simon Marlow wrote:
> I want to propose a simple change to the -i flag for finding source
> files.  The problem we often have is that when you're writing code for a
> library that lives deep in the module hierarchy, you end up needing a
> deep directory structure, e.g.
>
>   src/
>     Graphics/
>       UI/
>        Gtk/
>          Button.hs
>          Label.hs
>          ...
>
> where the top few layers are all empty.  There have been proposals of
> elaborate solutions for this in the past (module grafting etc.), but I
> want to propose something really simple that would avoid this problem
> with minimal additional complexity:
>
>    ghc -iGraphics.UI.Gtk=src
>
> the meaning of this flag is that when searching for modules, ghc will
> look for the module Graphics.UI.Gtk.Button in src/Button.hs, rather than
> src/Graphics/UI/Gtk/Button.hs.  The source file itself is unchanged: it
> still begins with "module Graphics.UI.Gtk.Button ...".
>
> The implementation is only a few lines in the Finder (and probably
> rather more in the manual and testsuite), but I wanted to get a sense of
> whether people thought this would be a good idea, or if there's a better
> alternative before I push it.
>
> Pros:
>
>    - simple implementation (but Cabal needs mods, see below)
>    - solves the deep directory problem
>
> Cons:
>
>    - It makes the rules about finding files a bit more complicated.
>      People need to find source files too, not just compilers.
>    - packages that want to be compatible with older compilers can't
>      use it yet.
>    - you can't use '=' in a source directory name (but we could pick
>      a different syntax if necessary)
>    - It won't work for Cabal packages until Cabal is modified to
>      support it (PreProcess and SrcDist and perhaps Haddock are the only
>      places affected, I think)
>    - Hackage will need to reject packages that use this feature without
>      also specifying ghc >= 7.10 and some cabal-version too.
>    - Are there other tools/libraries that will need changes? Leksah?
>
> Cheers,
> Simon