RFC: Removing the `-hb` profiling option

[Evan Laforge]

I've used this a lot when looking for leaks.  Especially combined with
other things like -hbdrag -hc, so I'd be sad to see it go.  Without
it, how do you find lag and drag?

On the other hand, the entire profiling system has been hard to use
because of crashes (perhaps due to that thread-unsafety thing), but
also because of lack of documentation, the fact that SCCs can
drastically change the performance of the things they are trying to
measure, and probably just personal incompetence.  But that's not
really directly relevant to -hb, except to say I'd rather fix it than
delete it.

On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 2:04 AM, Erik de Castro Lopo
<mle+hs at mega-nerd.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> After a bit of rather tedious and frustrating debugging I came to the
> realisation that the code for the `-hb` profiling option is not thread
> safe. See https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/12019
>
> This gives us an opportunity to simply remove it instead of fixing it.
> If there is anyone that thinks this future is really useful (ie more
> useful than the other profiling modes) then I'm willing to fix it.
> But if noone would miss it. I'd much rather remove it.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Erik
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Erik de Castro Lopo
> http://www.mega-nerd.com/
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