[Haskell-cafe] Reducing the need for CPP

[Kosyrev Serge]

Ben Gamari <ben at smart-cactus.org> writes:
> This is a fair point that comes up fairly often. The fact that CPP is
> required to silence redundant import warnings is quite unfortunate.
> Others languages have better stories in this area. One example is Rust,
> which has a quite flexible `#[allow(...)]` pragma which can be used to
> acknowledge and silence a wide variety of warnings and lints [1].
>
> I can think of a few ways (some better than others) how we might
> introduce a similar idea for import redundancy checks in Haskell,
>
>  1. Attach a `{-# ALLOW redundant_import #-}` pragma to a definition,
...
>  2. Or alternatively we could make this a idea a bit more precise,
>         {-# ALLOW redundant_import Prelude.(<$>) #-}
...
>  3. Attach a `{-# ALLOW redundancy_import #-}` pragma to an import,
>         import {-# ALLOW redundant_import #-} Control.Applicative
...
>  4. Attach a `{-# ALLOW redundancy_import #-}` pragma to a name in an
>     import list,
>         import Control.Applicative ((<$>) {-# ALLOW redundant_import #-})

What I don't like about this solution is how specific it is -- the gut
instinct that it can't be the last such extension, if we were to start
replacing CPP piecemeal.

And after a while, we'd accomodate a number of such extensions..
and they would keep coming.. until it converges to a trainwreck.

I think that what instead needs to be done, is this:

  1. a concerted effort to summarize *all* uses of CPP in Haskell code
  2. a bit of forward thinking, to include desirables that would be easy
     to get with a more generic solution

Personally, I think that any such effort, approached with generality
that would be truly satisfying, should inevitably converge to an
AST-level mechanism.

..but then I remember how CPP can be used to paper over incompatible
syntax changes..

Hmm..

-- 
с уважениeм / respectfully,
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