GitLab

This cleans up the package subsystem a little.  There are some
changes to the GHC API as a result.

  - GHC.init and GHC.initFromArgs are no longer necessary.

  - GHC.newSession takes the root of the GHC tree as an argument
    (previously passed to GHC.init).

  - You *must* do GHC.setSessionDynFlags after GHC.newSession,
    this is what loads the package database.

  - Several global vars removed from SysTools

  - The :set command in GHCi can now cause new packages to be loaded,
    or can hide/ignore existing packages.

In particular, if we're searching for the profiling version of a
module in another package, then suggest that perhaps it might not have
been installed.

This patch pushes through one fundamental change: a module is now
identified by the pair of its package and module name, whereas
previously it was identified by its module name alone.  This means
that now a program can contain multiple modules with the same name, as
long as they belong to different packages.

This is a language change - the Haskell report says nothing about
packages, but it is now necessary to understand packages in order to
understand GHC's module system.  For example, a type T from module M
in package P is different from a type T from module M in package Q.
Previously this wasn't an issue because there could only be a single
module M in the program.

The "module restriction" on combining packages has therefore been
lifted, and a program can contain multiple versions of the same
package.

Note that none of the proposed syntax changes have yet been
implemented, but the architecture is geared towards supporting import
declarations qualified by package name, and that is probably the next
step.

It is now necessary to specify the package name when compiling a
package, using the -package-name flag (which has been un-deprecated).
Fortunately Cabal still uses -package-name.

Certain packages are "wired in".  Currently the wired-in packages are:
base, haskell98, template-haskell and rts, and are always referred to
by these versionless names.  Other packages are referred to with full
package IDs (eg. "network-1.0").  This is because the compiler needs
to refer to entities in the wired-in packages, and we didn't want to
bake the version of these packages into the comiler.  It's conceivable
that someone might want to upgrade the base package independently of
GHC.

Internal changes:

  - There are two module-related types:

        ModuleName      just a FastString, the name of a module
        Module          a pair of a PackageId and ModuleName

    A mapping from ModuleName can be a UniqFM, but a mapping from Module
    must be a FiniteMap (we provide it as ModuleEnv).

  - The "HomeModules" type that was passed around the compiler is now
    gone, replaced in most cases by the current package name which is
    contained in DynFlags.  We can tell whether a Module comes from the
    current package by comparing its package name against the current
    package.

  - While I was here, I changed PrintUnqual to be a little more useful:
    it now returns the ModuleName that the identifier should be qualified
    with according to the current scope, rather than its original
    module.  Also, PrintUnqual tells whether to qualify module names with
    package names (currently unused).

Docs to follow.

Most of the other users of the fptools build system have migrated to
Cabal, and with the move to darcs we can now flatten the source tree
without losing history, so here goes.

The main change is that the ghc/ subdir is gone, and most of what it
contained is now at the top level.  The build system now makes no
pretense at being multi-project, it is just the GHC build system.

No doubt this will break many things, and there will be a period of
instability while we fix the dependencies.  A straightforward build
should work, but I haven't yet fixed binary/source distributions.
Changes to the Building Guide will follow, too.

Use the lexer to parse OPTIONS, LANGUAGE and INCLUDE pragmas.
This gives us greater flexibility and far better error
messages. However, I had to make a few quirks:
  * The token parser is written manually since Happy doesn't
    like lexer errors (we need to extract options before the
    buffer is passed through 'cpp'). Still better than
    manually parsing a String, though.
  * The StringBuffer API has been extended so files can be
    read in blocks.
I also made a new field in ModSummary called ms_hspp_opts
which stores the updated DynFlags. Oh, and I took the liberty
of moving 'getImports' into HeaderInfo together with
'getOptions'.

This restructoring makes the renamed export and import lists
available in IDE mode.

This patch adds completion support to GHCi when readline is being
used.  Completion of identifiers (in scope only, but including
qualified identifiers) in expressions is provided.  Also, completion
of commands (:cmd), and special completion for certain commands
(eg. module names for the :module command) are also provided.

This very large commit adds impredicativity to GHC, plus
numerous other small things.
  
*** WARNING: I have compiled all the libraries, and
***	     a stage-2 compiler, and everything seems
***	     fine.  But don't grab this patch if you 
***	     can't tolerate a hiccup if something is
***	     broken.
  
The big picture is this:

a) GHC handles impredicative polymorphism, as described in the
   "Boxy types: type inference for higher-rank types and
   impredicativity" paper

b) GHC handles GADTs in the new simplified (and very sligtly less
   epxrssive) way described in the
   "Simple unification-based type inference for GADTs" paper

  
But there are lots of smaller changes, and since it was pre-Darcs
they are not individually recorded.
  
Some things to watch out for:
  
c)   The story on lexically-scoped type variables has changed, as per
     my email.  I append the story below for completeness, but I 
     am still not happy with it, and it may change again.  In particular,
     the new story does not allow a pattern-bound scoped type variable
     to be wobbly, so (\(x::[a]) -> ...) is usually rejected.  This is
     more restrictive than before, and we might loosen up again.
  
d)   A consequence of adding impredicativity is that GHC is a bit less
     gung ho about converting automatically between
  	(ty1 -> forall a. ty2)    and    (forall a. ty1 -> ty2)
     In particular, you may need to eta-expand some functions to make
     typechecking work again.
   
     Furthermore, functions are now invariant in their argument types,
     rather than being contravariant.  Again, the main consequence is
     that you may occasionally need to eta-expand function arguments when
     using higher-rank polymorphism.
  

Please test, and let me know of any hiccups


Scoped type variables in GHC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
	January 2006

0) Terminology.
   
   A *pattern binding* is of the form
	pat = rhs

   A *function binding* is of the form
	f pat1 .. patn = rhs

   A binding of the formm
	var = rhs
   is treated as a (degenerate) *function binding*.


   A *declaration type signature* is a separate type signature for a
   let-bound or where-bound variable:
	f :: Int -> Int

   A *pattern type signature* is a signature in a pattern: 
	\(x::a) -> x
	f (x::a) = x

   A *result type signature* is a signature on the result of a
   function definition:
	f :: forall a. [a] -> a
	head (x:xs) :: a = x

   The form
	x :: a = rhs
   is treated as a (degnerate) function binding with a result
   type signature, not as a pattern binding.

1) The main invariants:

     A) A lexically-scoped type variable always names a (rigid)
 	type variable (not an arbitrary type).  THIS IS A CHANGE.
        Previously, a scoped type variable named an arbitrary *type*.

     B) A type signature always describes a rigid type (since
	its free (scoped) type variables name rigid type variables).
	This is also a change, a consequence of (A).

     C) Distinct lexically-scoped type variables name distinct
	rigid type variables.  This choice is open; 

2) Scoping

2(a) If a declaration type signature has an explicit forall, those type
   variables are brought into scope in the right hand side of the 
   corresponding binding (plus, for function bindings, the patterns on
   the LHS).  
	f :: forall a. a -> [a]
	f (x::a) = [x :: a, x]
   Both occurences of 'a' in the second line are bound by 
   the 'forall a' in the first line

   A declaration type signature *without* an explicit top-level forall
   is implicitly quantified over all the type variables that are
   mentioned in the type but not already in scope.  GHC's current
   rule is that this implicit quantification does *not* bring into scope
   any new scoped type variables.
	f :: a -> a
	f x = ...('a' is not in scope here)...
   This gives compatibility with Haskell 98

2(b) A pattern type signature implicitly brings into scope any type
   variables mentioned in the type that are not already into scope.
   These are called *pattern-bound type variables*.
	g :: a -> a -> [a]
	g (x::a) (y::a) = [y :: a, x]
   The pattern type signature (x::a) brings 'a' into scope.
   The 'a' in the pattern (y::a) is bound, as is the occurrence on 
   the RHS.  

   A pattern type siganture is the only way you can bring existentials 
   into scope.
	data T where
	  MkT :: forall a. a -> (a->Int) -> T

	f x = case x of
		MkT (x::a) f -> f (x::a)

2a) QUESTION
	class C a where
	  op :: forall b. b->a->a

	instance C (T p q) where
	  op = <rhs>
    Clearly p,q are in scope in <rhs>, but is 'b'?  Not at the moment.
    Nor can you add a type signature for op in the instance decl.
    You'd have to say this:
	instance C (T p q) where
	  op = let op' :: forall b. ...
	           op' = <rhs>
	       in op'

3) A pattern-bound type variable is allowed only if the pattern's
   expected type is rigid.  Otherwise we don't know exactly *which*
   skolem the scoped type variable should be bound to, and that means
   we can't do GADT refinement.  This is invariant (A), and it is a 
   big change from the current situation.

	f (x::a) = x	-- NO; pattern type is wobbly
	
	g1 :: b -> b
	g1 (x::b) = x	-- YES, because the pattern type is rigid

	g2 :: b -> b
	g2 (x::c) = x	-- YES, same reason

	h :: forall b. b -> b
	h (x::b) = x	-- YES, but the inner b is bound

	k :: forall b. b -> b
	k (x::c) = x	-- NO, it can't be both b and c

3a) You cannot give different names for the same type variable in the same scope
    (Invariant (C)):

	f1 :: p -> p -> p		-- NO; because 'a' and 'b' would be
	f1 (x::a) (y::b) = (x::a)	--     bound to the same type variable

	f2 :: p -> p -> p		-- OK; 'a' is bound to the type variable
	f2 (x::a) (y::a) = (x::a)	--     over which f2 is quantified
					-- NB: 'p' is not lexically scoped

	f3 :: forall p. p -> p -> p	-- NO: 'p' is now scoped, and is bound to
	f3 (x::a) (y::a) = (x::a)	--     to the same type varialble as 'a'

	f4 :: forall p. p -> p -> p	-- OK: 'p' is now scoped, and its occurences
	f4 (x::p) (y::p) = (x::p)	--     in the patterns are bound by the forall


3b) You can give a different name to the same type variable in different
    disjoint scopes, just as you can (if you want) give diferent names to 
    the same value parameter

	g :: a -> Bool -> Maybe a
	g (x::p) True  = Just x  :: Maybe p
	g (y::q) False = Nothing :: Maybe q

3c) Scoped type variables respect alpha renaming. For example, 
    function f2 from (3a) above could also be written:
	f2' :: p -> p -> p
	f2' (x::b) (y::b) = x::b
   where the scoped type variable is called 'b' instead of 'a'.


4) Result type signatures obey the same rules as pattern types signatures.
   In particular, they can bind a type variable only if the result type is rigid

	f x :: a = x	-- NO

	g :: b -> b
	g x :: b = x	-- YES; binds b in rhs

5) A *pattern type signature* in a *pattern binding* cannot bind a 
   scoped type variable

	(x::a, y) = ...		-- Legal only if 'a' is already in scope

   Reason: in type checking, the "expected type" of the LHS pattern is
   always wobbly, so we can't bind a rigid type variable.  (The exception
   would be for an existential type variable, but existentials are not
   allowed in pattern bindings either.)
 
   Even this is illegal
	f :: forall a. a -> a
	f x = let ((y::b)::a, z) = ... 
	      in 
   Here it looks as if 'b' might get a rigid binding; but you can't bind
   it to the same skolem as a.

6) Explicitly-forall'd type variables in the *declaration type signature(s)*
   for a *pattern binding* do not scope AT ALL.

	x :: forall a. a->a	  -- NO; the forall a does 
	Just (x::a->a) = Just id  --     not scope at all

	y :: forall a. a->a
	Just y = Just (id :: a->a)  -- NO; same reason

   THIS IS A CHANGE, but one I bet that very few people will notice.
   Here's why:

	strange :: forall b. (b->b,b->b)
	strange = (id,id)

	x1 :: forall a. a->a
	y1 :: forall b. b->b
	(x1,y1) = strange

    This is legal Haskell 98 (modulo the forall). If both 'a' and 'b'
    both scoped over the RHS, they'd get unified and so cannot stand
    for distinct type variables. One could *imagine* allowing this:
   
	x2 :: forall a. a->a
	y2 :: forall a. a->a
	(x2,y2) = strange

    using the very same type variable 'a' in both signatures, so that
    a single 'a' scopes over the RHS.  That seems defensible, but odd,
    because though there are two type signatures, they introduce just
    *one* scoped type variable, a.

7) Possible extension.  We might consider allowing
	\(x :: [ _ ]) -> <expr>
    where "_" is a wild card, to mean "x has type list of something", without
    naming the something.

Fix build on 5.04.x again

GHC.runStmt: run the statement in a new thread to insulate the
environment from bad things that the user code might do, such as fork
a thread to send an exception back at a later time.  In order to do
this, we had to keep track of which thread the ^C exception should go
to in a global variable.

Also, bullet-proof the top-level exception handler in GHCi a bit;
there was a small window where an exception could get through, so if
you lean on ^C for a while then press enter you could cause GHCi to
exit.

Add support for UTF-8 source files

GHC finally has support for full Unicode in source files.  Source
files are now assumed to be UTF-8 encoded, and the full range of
Unicode characters can be used, with classifications recognised using
the implementation from Data.Char.  This incedentally means that only
the stage2 compiler will recognise Unicode in source files, because I
was too lazy to port the unicode classifier code into libcompat.

Additionally, the following synonyms for keywords are now recognised:

  forall symbol 	(U+2200)	forall
  right arrow   	(U+2192)	->
  left arrow   		(U+2190)	<-
  horizontal ellipsis 	(U+22EF)	..

there are probably more things we could add here.

This will break some source files if Latin-1 characters are being used.
In most cases this should result in a UTF-8 decoding error.  Later on
if we want to support more encodings (perhaps with a pragma to specify
the encoding), I plan to do it by recoding into UTF-8 before parsing.

Internally, there were some pretty big changes:

  - FastStrings are now stored in UTF-8

  - Z-encoding has been moved right to the back end.  Previously we
    used to Z-encode every identifier on the way in for simplicity,
    and only decode when we needed to show something to the user.
    Instead, we now keep every string in its UTF-8 encoding, and
    Z-encode right before printing it out.  To avoid Z-encoding the
    same string multiple times, the Z-encoding is cached inside the
    FastString the first time it is requested.

    This speeds up the compiler - I've measured some definite
    improvement in parsing at least, and I expect compilations overall
    to be faster too.  It also cleans up a lot of cruft from the
    OccName interface.  Z-encoding is nicely hidden inside the
    Outputable instance for Names & OccNames now.

  - StringBuffers are UTF-8 too, and are now represented as
    ForeignPtrs.

  - I've put together some test cases, not by any means exhaustive,
    but there are some interesting UTF-8 decoding error cases that
    aren't obvious.  Also, take a look at unicode001.hs for a demo.

export ModLocation(..)

Wibble to printing FunTyCon in GHCi that makes :b GHC.Base work

Change the way in which the .exe suffix to the output file is added. The reason
is that "-o main" will generate main.exe on Windows while the doesFileExists "main"
in DriverPipeline.link will return False.

The guessed output file should have ".exe" extension on Windows. ld tends to
add .exe automatically if the output file doesn't have extension but if
we don't add the extension explicitly then the doesFileExists check in
DriverPipeline.link will fail.

Change the default executable name to match the basename of the source
file containing the Main module (or the module specified by -main-is),
if there is one.  On Windows, the .exe extension is added.

As requested on the ghc-users list, and as implemented by Tomasz
Zielonka <tomasz.zielonka at gmail.com>, with modifications by me.

I changed the type of the mainModIs field of DynFlags from Maybe
String to Module, which removed some duplicate code.

Two changes from Krasimir Angelov, which were required for Visual
Haskell:

  - messaging cleanup throughout the compiler.  DynFlags has a new
    field:

    log_action :: Severity -> SrcSpan -> PprStyle -> Message -> IO ()

    this action is invoked for every message generated by the
    compiler.  This means a client of the GHC API can direct messages to
    any destination, or collect them up in an IORef for later
    perusal.

    This replaces previous hacks to redirect messages in the GHC API
    (hence some changes to function types in GHC.hs).

  - The JustTypecheck mode of GHC now does what it says.  It doesn't
    run any of the compiler passes beyond the typechecker for each module,
    but does generate the ModIface in order that further modules can be
    typechecked.

And one change from me:

  - implement the LANGUAGE pragma, finally

add pprInstanceHdr function. It is analogous to pprTyThingHdr and prints the
instance but without the "-- Defined at ...." comment. The function is used in
VStudio to populate the ClassView tree.

Make ghc -M work when you give multiple files with the same
module name.  We want to do this to the STABLE branch too,
but this commit will not merge; it'll need to be done
afresh.

WARNING: this is a big commit.  You might want 
	to wait a few days before updating, in case I've 
	broken something.

	However, if any of the changes are what you wanted,
	please check it out and test!

This commit does three main things:

1. A re-organisation of the way that GHC handles bindings in HsSyn.
   This has been a bit of a mess for quite a while.  The key new
   types are

	-- Bindings for a let or where clause
	data HsLocalBinds id
	  = HsValBinds (HsValBinds id)
	  | HsIPBinds  (HsIPBinds id)
	  | EmptyLocalBinds

	-- Value bindings (not implicit parameters)
	data HsValBinds id
	  = ValBindsIn  -- Before typechecking
		(LHsBinds id) [LSig id]	-- Not dependency analysed
					-- Recursive by default

	  | ValBindsOut	-- After typechecking
		[(RecFlag, LHsBinds id)]-- Dependency analysed

2. Implement Mark Jones's idea of increasing polymoprhism
   by using type signatures to cut the strongly-connected components
   of a recursive group.  As a consequence, GHC no longer insists
   on the contexts of the type signatures of a recursive group
   being identical.

   This drove a significant change: the renamer no longer does dependency
   analysis.  Instead, it attaches a free-variable set to each binding,
   so that the type checker can do the dep anal.  Reason: the typechecker
   needs to do *two* analyses:
	one to find the true mutually-recursive groups
		(which we need so we can build the right CoreSyn)
	one to find the groups in which to typecheck, taking
		account of type signatures

3. Implement non-ground SPECIALISE pragmas, as promised, and as
   requested by Remi and Ross.  Certainly, this should fix the 
   current problem with GHC, namely that if you have
	g :: Eq a => a -> b -> b
   then you can now specialise thus
	SPECIALISE g :: Int -> b -> b
    (This didn't use to work.)

   However, it goes further than that.  For example:
	f :: (Eq a, Ix b) => a -> b -> b
   then you can make a partial specialisation
	SPECIALISE f :: (Eq a) => a -> Int -> Int

    In principle, you can specialise f to *any* type that is
    "less polymorphic" (in the sense of subsumption) than f's 
    actual type.  Such as
	SPECIALISE f :: Eq a => [a] -> Int -> Int
    But I haven't tested that.

    I implemented this by doing the specialisation in the typechecker
    and desugarer, rather than leaving around the strange SpecPragmaIds,
    for the specialiser to find.  Indeed, SpecPragmaIds have vanished 
    altogether (hooray).

    Pragmas in general are handled more tidily.  There's a new
    data type HsBinds.Prag, which lives in an AbsBinds, and carries
    pragma info from the typechecker to the desugarer.


Smaller things

- The loop in the renamer goes via RnExpr, instead of RnSource.
  (That makes it more like the type checker.)

- I fixed the thing that was causing 'check_tc' warnings to be 
  emitted.

export some more bits

Relax the restrictions on conflicting packages.  This should address
many of the traps that people have been falling into with the current
package story.

Now, a local module can shadow a module in an exposed package, as long
as the package is not otherwise required by the program.  GHC checks
for conflicts when it knows the dependencies of the module being
compiled.

Also, we now check for module conflicts in exposed packages only when
importing a module: if an import can be satisfied from multiple
packages, that's an error.  It's not possible to prevent GHC from
starting by installing packages now (unless you install another base
package).

It seems to be possible to confuse GHCi by having a local module
shadowing a package module that goes away and comes back again.  I
think it's nearly right, but strange happenings have been observed.

I'll try to merge this into the STABLE branch.

Fix stage1 compilation

Re-implement GHCi's :info and :browse commands in terms of TyThings
rather than IfaceSyn.

The GHC API now exposes its internal types for Haskell entities:
TyCons, Classes, DataCons, Ids and Instances (collectively known as
TyThings), so we can inspect these directly to pretty-print
information about an entity.  Previously the internal representations
were converted to IfaceSyn for passing to InteractiveUI, but we can
now remove that code.

Some of the new code comes via Visual Haskell, but I've changed it
around a lot to fix various dark corners and properly print things
like GADTs.

The pretty-printing interfaces for TyThings are exposed by a new
module PprTyThing, which is implemented purely in terms of the GHC API
(and is probably a good source of sample code).  Visual Haskell should
be able to use the functions exported by this module directly.

Lots of new goodies are exported by the GHC module, mainly for
inspecting TyThings.

- Eliminate some warnings, remove dead code
- export PrintUnqualified, alwaysQualify

Make GHC.depanal store the module graph in the session again.  Fixes
ghc -M.

Make more error messages from the downsweep into ErrMsg exceptions.

oops, fix updating the module graph