[nhc-users] hmake 3.09

[Malcolm Wallace]

Ian Lynagh <igloo at earth.li> writes:

> Speaking of nhc98 problems, when building hat on sparc I'm getting
> 
> $ nhc98   +RTS -H32M -K2M -RTS +CTS -H32M -CTS  -I. -I../compiler98  -c  -o
> /scratch/igloo/hat/hat-2.02/debian/build-nhc98/targets/sparc-Linux/obj/hatt
> rans/HbcOnly.o ../compiler98/HbcOnly.hs Ratio.%: zero denominator
> $ 
> 
> and the same with 16M instead of 32M, but with 20M it (this file -
> haven't tried further) compiles fine. Does this sound like a heap
> corruption bug, or have you got any other idea of what might cause it?
> Has anything changed in CVS that might have fixed it?

If the error varies with heapsize, it definitely sounds like heap
corruption, yes.  One possibility is that the program continues to
allocate a few cells after the heap is full, before noticing and
triggering GC.  However, this kind of bug is extremely difficult to
track down.

> Ah, I guess the compiler will give a suitable error anyway if the gap
> contains illegal characters, so not checking seems reasonable. Handling
> the [] case would definitely be good, though.

Agreed.

Regards,
    Malcolm