7.8.1, template haskell, and dynamic libraries

Simon Marlow marlowsd at gmail.com
Mon Feb 17 10:07:05 UTC 2014


I think you can summarise all that with "tl;dr the right thing will 
happen, you don't have to remember to give any new flags to GHC or Cabal".

Cheers,
Simon

On 09/02/2014 21:14, Austin Seipp wrote:
> Actually, just to keep it even simpler, so nobody else is confused
> further: Cabal will *also* properly turn on dynamic builds for regular
> packages if GHC is dynamic, TemplateHaskell or not. So any library you
> compile will still work in GHCi as expected.
>
> So here's the breakdown:
>
>    1) Cabal 1.18 will handle dynamical GHCi correctly, including
> compiling things dynamically, however it must.
>    2) Per #1, libraries are compiled dynamically. This means libraries
> work in GHCi, just like they did.
>    3) -Executables- are statically linked by default, still. (But
> because of #1 and #2, it's very easy to turn on dynamic exes as well,
> without needing to recompile a lot.)
>    4) TemplateHaskell works as expected due to #1 and #2. But there is
> one caveat for executables, noted separately below.
>
> The caveat with TemplateHaskell is for executables: This is because if
> you end up with an executable that needs TH and profiling, Cabal must
> be aware of this. Why? Because GHCi cannot load *profiled* objects,
> only normal ones. So we must compile twice: once without profiling,
> and once with profiling. The second compilation will use the 'normal'
> objects, even though the final executable will be profiled. Cabal
> doesn't know to do this if it doesn't know TemplateHaskell is a
> requirement.
>
> Does this clear things up? My last message might give the impression
> some things aren't compiled dynamically, because I merely ambiguously
> referred to 'packages'.
>
> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Austin Seipp <austin at well-typed.com> wrote:
>> It is correct that Template Haskell now requires dynamic objects.
>> However, GHC can produce static and dynamic objects at the same time,
>> so you don't have to recompile a package twice (it's a big
>> optimization, basically).
>>
>> Furthermore, if TemplateHaskell is enabled as a requirement for a
>> package, and GHC is built dynamically, Cabal will do The Right Thing
>> by building the shared objects for the dependencies as well. It will
>> save time by doing so using -dynamic-too, if possible. This is because
>> it queries GHC before compilation to figure this out (you can run 'ghc
>> --info' with the 7.8.1 RC to see "GHC Dynamic" and "Supports
>> dynamic-too" fields.)
>>
>> Finally, if you simply run 'ghc Foo.hs' on a file that requires
>> TemplateHaskell, it will also switch on -dynamic-too for the needed
>> objects in this simple case.
>>
>> There is one caveat, if I remember correctly: if a package uses
>> TemplateHaskell, it must declare it as such in the Cabal file. This is
>> because Cabal does not parse the source to detect if TemplateHaskell
>> is needed in the dependency graph of the compiled modules. Only GHC
>> can do this reliably. If you don't specify TemplateHaskell as an
>> extension, Cabal might not do the right thing. This is noted in the
>> release notes:
>>
>>> Note that Cabal will correctly handle -dynamic-too for you automatically, especially when -XTemplateHaskell is needed - but you *must* tell Cabal you are using the TemplateHaskell extension.
>>
>> However, based on the other suggestions in the thread and confusion
>> around this, a big "Incompatible changes" section with this listed as
>> the first thing with clear detail would be a good idea. I'll do so.
>>
>> If something else is going on, please file a bug.
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 1:37 PM, George Colpitts
>> <george.colpitts at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Yes, in general I think the doc needs a section: Incompatible changes. The
>>> hope is that you can take the release and just work as usual but when (for
>>> good reasons as in this release) it is not true is is important to have such
>>> a section. Another case that needs to be there is how to compile so you can
>>> load compile object files into ghci as what you did in 7.6.3 won't work in
>>> this release.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 1:11 PM, Carter Schonwald
>>> <carter.schonwald at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Indeed. The problem is that many folks might have cabal config files that
>>>> explicitly disable shared.  (For the compile times!).  They might need clear
>>>> information about wiping that field.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sunday, February 9, 2014, Brandon Allbery <allbery.b at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Greg Horn <gregmainland at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is --enable-shared off by default?
>>>>>
>>>>> It's supposed to be on by default in 7.8. That said, not sure how many
>>>>> people have played with ~/.cabal/config....
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine
>>>>> associates
>>>>> allbery.b at gmail.com
>>>>> ballbery at sinenomine.net
>>>>> unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad
>>>>> http://sinenomine.net
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
>>>> Glasgow-haskell-users at haskell.org
>>>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
>>> Glasgow-haskell-users at haskell.org
>>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>>
>> Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant
>> Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/
>
>
>


More information about the Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list