Control validity-checking of type synonym applications more carefully
Trac #16059 (closed) shows that when validity checking applications of type synonyms, GHC sometimes wasn't checking the expanded type enough. We must be careful, however, since checking both the expanded type as well as the arguments to the type synonym can lead to exponential blowup (see https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/16059#comment:4). Nor can we omit checking either the expanded type or the argument for correctness reasons.
The solution here is to introduce a new ExpandMode
data type that
is plumbed through all of the type-validity-checking functions in
TcValidity
. ExpandMode
dictates whether we only check the
expanded type (Expand
), only check the arguments (NoExpand
), or
both (Both
). Importantly, if we check Both
in the function for
validity checking type synonym applications, then we switch to
NoExpand
when checking the arguments so as to avoid exponential
blowup. See Note [Correctness and performance of type synonym validity checking]
for the full story.