RFC: Removing the `-hb` profiling option

[Bardur Arantsson]

On 05/06/2016 11:04 AM, Erik de Castro Lopo 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.
> 

I can't say I've ever used the option, but just to inform discussion...

Do you have any guesstimate[1] of how much effort it would take to fix
vs. just removing? Unless there's a reasonably clear idea of how much
effort there's going to be in it[2], I usually err on the side of
removal *unless* a really good case can be made.

Regards,

[1] As ballpark as you like. Even a ratio would work, I think.

[2] Which tends to not be the case for threading-related issues.