[Haskell-cafe] Re: Non-technical Haskell question

[Robert Dockins]

> On 6 Dec 2004, at 17:29, John Goerzen wrote:
> 
>>
>> That is an excellent point.  Who would use an ls or cp that requires
>> 10MB of RAM, especially on embedded devices?
>>
> 
> This is presumably just because we don't have 'smart' linking, so the 
> whole library is bundled in. I imagine in principle smart linking would 
> be possible...

Indeed, and it would probably help with the xwHaskell bloat from a 
diffent post.


>> optimization.  I for one think that the performance benefit we see from
>> that is more than offset by the inconvenience.  If it were at least made
>> an option, then a lot of other options would become available to us,
>> too.
>>
> 
> I imageine that turning off cross-module inlining could be catastrophic 
> for performance in certain cases. 

But, (and here is the point) not in ALL cases.  In particular, if we 
could segment closely related code with many interdependencies into 
discrete units with well defined external interfaces (sound like 
packages to anyone else?), then my intuition tells me that the cost of 
setting up an inlining barrier should be fairly low.  Module inlining 
_within_ a package would still occur, just not _between_ packages.