[Haskell-cafe] ghc-prof-options and libraries on Hackage

[Johan Tibell]

Agreed. Cabal should warn.
On Sep 21, 2014 8:13 PM, "Oliver Charles" <ollie at ocharles.org.uk> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to start a conversation around the ghc-prof-options option that
> can be used in Cabal-ized libraries. As you may know, this option specifies
> extra GHC options that are used when --enable-library-profiling is enabled.
> This is very convenient for local development, but I argue that it can be
> counter-productive for releases onto Hackage.
>
> To provide an example, I'm currently working on a little game engine that
> uses JuicyPixels to load images. I have a problem in my code that needs
> optimizing, but the current state of things results in profiles that are
> very difficult to work with. JuicyPixels specifies -auto-all in its cabal
> file, which means I have no alternative but to profile JuicyPixels code. In
> this scenario, the bottleneck is actually within my FRP game loop and
> nothing to do with image loading! As a result, the profiles are fairly
> useless to me.
>
>
> Roman Cheplyaka also points out that by doing this, profiles are skewed -
> -auto-all is not free, so we actually pay in runtime performance every time
> a library does this.
>
> I would like to hear from others if we should consider managing this
> option a little more. My personal feeling is that this flag shouldn't be
> used unless in local development, so guarded by an off-by-default build
> flag. I think cabal should also warn authors who are using this flag, and
> encourage them to place a guard around this option.
>
> Thoughts?
> - ocharles
>
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