[Haskell-cafe] Re: Weird ghci behaviour?

[ChrisK]

Claim: The "ghci modulename" and ":load modulename" command are confusing
because they have two behaviors.

Short form of my proposal: Make two separate commands that each have a
predictable behavior.  Make "ghci modulename" default to source loading, and
require a flag to load a binary.  I don't give a bikeshed what they are called.
 I don't care if the magic ":load" stays or goes or ends up with only one behavior.

This is different/orthogonal to the .o or .hs file extension sensitive proposal.

My arguments:

I run into annoyances because I often poke at things in ghci when trying to get
my package to compile.  So depending on which modules succeeded or failed to
compile I get different behavior when loading into ghci.  I am no longer
confused by this, but just annoyed.

I would say that the user gets surprised which leads to feeling that there is a
lack of control.

The '*' in the '*Main>' versus 'Main>' prompt is a UI feature for experts, not
for new users.  Making this more obvious or verbose or better documented does
not fix the lack of control the user feels.

The only flags that the user can easily find are those listed by --help:

> chrisk$ ghci --help
> Usage:
> 
>     ghci [command-line-options-and-input-files]
> 
> The kinds of input files that can be given on the command-line
> include:
> 
>   - Haskell source files (.hs or .lhs suffix)
>   - Object files (.o suffix, or .obj on Windows)
>   - Dynamic libraries (.so suffix, or .dll on Windows)
> 
> In addition, ghci accepts most of the command-line options that plain
> GHC does.  Some of the options that are commonly used are:
> 
>     -fglasgow-exts  Allow Glasgow extensions (unboxed types, etc.)
> 
>     -i<dir>         Search for imported modules in the directory <dir>.
> 
>     -H32m	    Increase GHC's default heap size to 32m
> 
>     -cpp            Enable CPP processing of source files
> 
> Full details can be found in the User's Guide, an online copy of which
> can be found here:
> 
>     http://www.haskell.org/ghc/documentation.html

The -fforce-recomp and -fno-force-recomp flags only exist in the User's Guide.
Thus they are hard to find. Is there a ticket open for adding at least a list of
the recognized flags to ghc and ghci usage messages?

Ideally, I want a ":load modulename" to get the source and a ":bin modulename"
to get the binary (and a ":m ..." to get the binary).  I want "ghci modulename"
to get the source and "ghch -bin modulename" to get the binary.  Simple and
predictable and no surprises.

Cheers,
  Chris K