Simon Peyton Jones authored Mar 10, 2023 and Krzysztof Gogolewski committed Apr 14, 2023

This MR substantially refactors the way in which the constraint
solver deals with equality constraints.  The big thing is:

* Intead of a pipeline in which we /first/ canonicalise and /then/
  interact (the latter including performing unification) the two steps
  are more closely integreated into one.  That avoids the current
  rather indirect communication between the two steps.

The proximate cause for this refactoring is fixing #22194, which involve
solving   [W] alpha[2] ~ Maybe (F beta[4])
by doing this:
          alpha[2] := Maybe delta[2]
          [W] delta[2] ~ F beta[4]
That is, we don't promote beta[4]!  This is very like introducing a cycle
breaker, and was very awkward to do before, but now it is all nice.
See GHC.Tc.Utils.Unify Note [Promotion and level-checking] and
Note [Family applications in canonical constraints].

The big change is this:

* Several canonicalisation checks (occurs-check, cycle-breaking,
  checking for concreteness) are combined into one new function:
     GHC.Tc.Utils.Unify.checkTyEqRhs

  This function is controlled by `TyEqFlags`, which says what to do
  for foralls, type families etc.

* `canEqCanLHSFinish` now sees if unification is possible, and if so,
  actually does it: see `canEqCanLHSFinish_try_unification`.

There are loads of smaller changes:

* The on-the-fly unifier `GHC.Tc.Utils.Unify.unifyType` has a
  cheap-and-cheerful version of `checkTyEqRhs`, called
  `simpleUnifyCheck`.  If `simpleUnifyCheck` succeeds, it can unify,
  otherwise it defers by emitting a constraint. This is simpler than
  before.

* I simplified the swapping code in `GHC.Tc.Solver.Equality.canEqCanLHS`.
  Especially the nasty stuff involving `swap_for_occurs` and
  `canEqTyVarFunEq`.  Much nicer now.  See
      Note [Orienting TyVarLHS/TyFamLHS]
      Note [Orienting TyFamLHS/TyFamLHS]

* Added `cteSkolemOccurs`, `cteConcrete`, and `cteCoercionHole` to the
  problems that can be discovered by `checkTyEqRhs`.

* I fixed #23199 `pickQuantifiablePreds`, which actually allows GHC to
  to accept both cases in #22194 rather than rejecting both.

Yet smaller:

* Added a `synIsConcrete` flag to `SynonymTyCon` (alongside `synIsFamFree`)
  to reduce the need for synonym expansion when checking concreteness.
  Use it in `isConcreteType`.

* Renamed `isConcrete` to `isConcreteType`

* Defined `GHC.Core.TyCo.FVs.isInjectiveInType` as a more efficient
  way to find if a particular type variable is used injectively than
  finding all the injective variables.  It is called in
  `GHC.Tc.Utils.Unify.definitely_poly`, which in turn is used quite a
  lot.

* Moved `rewriterView` to `GHC.Core.Type`, so we can use it from the
  constraint solver.

Fixes #22194, #23199

Compile times decrease by an average of 0.1%; but there is a 7.4%
drop in compiler allocation on T15703.

Metric Decrease:
    T15703