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Commit cb93a1a4 authored by Ryan Scott's avatar Ryan Scott Committed by Marge Bot
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Make DeriveFunctor-generated code require fewer beta reductions

Issue #17880 demonstrates that `DeriveFunctor`-generated code is
surprisingly fragile when rank-_n_ types are involved. The culprit is
that `$fmap` (the algorithm used to generate `fmap` implementations)
was too keen on applying arguments with rank-_n_ types to lambdas,
which fail to typecheck more often than not.

In this patch, I change `$fmap` (both the specification and the
implementation) to produce code that avoids creating as many lambdas,
avoiding problems when rank-_n_ field types arise.
See the comments titled "Functor instances" in `TcGenFunctor` for a
more detailed description. Not only does this fix #17880, but it also
ensures that the code that `DeriveFunctor` generates will continue
to work after simplified subsumption is implemented (see #17775).

What is truly amazing is that #17880 is actually a regression
(introduced in GHC 7.6.3) caused by commit
49ca2a37, the fix #7436. Prior to
that commit, the version of `$fmap` that was used was almost
identical to the one used in this patch! Why did that commit change
`$fmap` then? It was to avoid severe performance issues that would
arise for recursive `fmap` implementations, such as in the example
below:

```hs
data List a = Nil | Cons a (List a) deriving Functor

-- ===>

instance Functor List where
  fmap f Nil = Nil
  fmap f (Cons x xs) = Cons (f x) (fmap (\y -> f y) xs)
```

The fact that `\y -> f y` was eta expanded caused significant
performance overheads. Commit
49ca2a37 fixed this performance
issue, but it went too far. As a result, this patch partially
reverts 49ca2a37.

To ensure that the performance issues pre-#7436 do not resurface,
I have taken some precautionary measures:

* I have added a special case to `$fmap` for situations where the
  last type variable in an application of some type occurs directly.
  If this special case fires, we avoid creating a lambda expression.
  This ensures that we generate
  `fmap f (Cons x xs) = Cons (f x) (fmap f xs)` in the derived
  `Functor List` instance above. For more details, see
  `Note [Avoid unnecessary eta expansion in derived fmap implementations]`
  in `TcGenFunctor`.
* I have added a `T7436b` test case to ensure that the performance
  of this derived `Functor List`-style code does not regress.

When implementing this, I discovered that `$replace`, the algorithm
which generates implementations of `(<$)`, has a special case that is
very similar to the `$fmap` special case described above. `$replace`
marked this special case with a custom `Replacer` data type, which
was a bit overkill. In order to use the same machinery for both
`Functor` methods, I ripped out `Replacer` and instead implemented
a simple way to detect the special case. See the updated commentary
in `Note [Deriving <$]` for more details.
parent a6989971
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