The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System User's Guide, Version 6.6.1

The GHC Team


Table of Contents

The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License
1. Introduction to GHC
1.1. Meta-information: Web sites, mailing lists, etc.
1.2. Reporting bugs in GHC
1.2.1. How do I tell if I should report my bug?
1.2.2. What to put in a bug report
1.3. GHC version numbering policy
1.4. Release notes for version 6.6.1
2. Installing GHC
2.1. Installing on Unix-a-likes
2.1.1. When a platform-specific package is available
2.1.2. GHC binary distributions
2.1.2.1. Installing
2.1.2.2. What bundles there are
2.1.2.3. Testing that GHC seems to be working
2.2. Installing on Windows
2.2.1. Installing GHC on Windows
2.2.2. Moving GHC around
2.2.3. Installing ghc-win32 FAQ
2.3. The layout of installed files
2.3.1. The binary directory
2.3.2. The library directory
3. Using GHCi
3.1. Introduction to GHCi
3.2. Loading source files
3.2.1. Modules vs. filenames
3.2.2. Making changes and recompilation
3.3. Loading compiled code
3.4. Interactive evaluation at the prompt
3.4.1. I/O actions at the prompt
3.4.2. Using do-notation at the prompt
3.4.3. What's really in scope at the prompt?
3.4.3.1. Qualified names
3.4.3.2. The :main command
3.4.4. The it variable
3.4.5. Type defaulting in GHCi
3.5. Invoking GHCi
3.5.1. Packages
3.5.2. Extra libraries
3.6. GHCi commands
3.7. The :set command
3.7.1. GHCi options
3.7.2. Setting GHC command-line options in GHCi
3.8. The .ghci file
3.9. FAQ and Things To Watch Out For
4. Using GHC
4.1. Options overview
4.1.1. command-line arguments
4.1.2. command line options in source files
4.1.3. Setting options in GHCi
4.2. Static, Dynamic, and Mode options
4.3. Meaningful file suffixes
4.4. Modes of operation
4.4.1. Using ghc ––make
4.4.2. Expression evaluation mode
4.4.3. Batch compiler mode
4.4.3.1. Overriding the default behaviour for a file
4.5. Help and verbosity options
4.6. Filenames and separate compilation
4.6.1. Haskell source files
4.6.2. Output files
4.6.3. The search path
4.6.4. Redirecting the compilation output(s)
4.6.5. Keeping Intermediate Files
4.6.6. Redirecting temporary files
4.6.7. Other options related to interface files
4.6.8. The recompilation checker
4.6.9. How to compile mutually recursive modules
4.6.10. Using make
4.6.11. Dependency generation
4.6.12. Orphan modules and instance declarations
4.7. Warnings and sanity-checking
4.8. Packages
4.8.1. Using Packages
4.8.2. Consequences of packages
4.8.3. Package Databases
4.8.3.1. The GHC_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable
4.8.4. Building a package from Haskell source
4.8.5. Package management (the ghc-pkg command)
4.8.6. InstalledPackageInfo: a package specification
4.9. Optimisation (code improvement)
4.9.1. -O*: convenient “packages” of optimisation flags.
4.9.2. -f*: platform-independent flags
4.10. Options related to a particular phase
4.10.1. Replacing the program for one or more phases
4.10.2. Forcing options to a particular phase
4.10.3. Options affecting the C pre-processor
4.10.3.1. CPP and string gaps
4.10.4. Options affecting a Haskell pre-processor
4.10.5. Options affecting the C compiler (if applicable)
4.10.6. Options affecting code generation
4.10.7. Options affecting linking
4.11. Using Concurrent Haskell
4.12. Using SMP parallelism
4.12.1. Options to enable SMP parallelism
4.12.2. Hints for using SMP parallelism
4.13. Platform-specific Flags
4.14. Running a compiled program
4.14.1. Setting global RTS options
4.14.2. Miscellaneous RTS options
4.14.3. RTS options to control the garbage collector
4.14.4. RTS options for profiling and parallelism
4.14.5. RTS options for hackers, debuggers, and over-interested souls
4.14.6. “Hooks” to change RTS behaviour
4.15. Generating and compiling External Core Files
4.16. Debugging the compiler
4.16.1. Dumping out compiler intermediate structures
4.16.2. Checking for consistency
4.16.3. How to read Core syntax (from some -ddump flags)
4.16.4. Unregisterised compilation
4.17. Flag reference
4.17.1. Help and verbosity options
4.17.2. Which phases to run
4.17.3. Alternative modes of operation
4.17.4. Redirecting output
4.17.5. Keeping intermediate files
4.17.6. Temporary files
4.17.7. Finding imports
4.17.8. Interface file options
4.17.9. Recompilation checking
4.17.10. Interactive-mode options
4.17.11. Packages
4.17.12. Language options
4.17.13. Warnings
4.17.14. Optimisation levels
4.17.15. Individual optimisations
4.17.16. Profiling options
4.17.17. Haskell pre-processor options
4.17.18. C pre-processor options
4.17.19. C compiler options
4.17.20. Code generation options
4.17.21. Linking options
4.17.22. Replacing phases
4.17.23. Forcing options to particular phases
4.17.24. Platform-specific options
4.17.25. External core file options
4.17.26. Compiler debugging options
4.17.27. Misc compiler options
5. Profiling
5.1. Cost centres and cost-centre stacks
5.1.1. Inserting cost centres by hand
5.1.2. Rules for attributing costs
5.2. Compiler options for profiling
5.3. Time and allocation profiling
5.4. Profiling memory usage
5.4.1. RTS options for heap profiling
5.4.2. Retainer Profiling
5.4.2.1. Hints for using retainer profiling
5.4.3. Biographical Profiling
5.4.4. Actual memory residency
5.5. Graphical time/allocation profile
5.6. hp2ps––heap profile to PostScript
5.6.1. Manipulating the hp file
5.6.2. Zooming in on regions of your profile
5.6.3. Viewing the heap profile of a running program
5.6.4. Viewing a heap profile in real time
5.7. Using “ticky-ticky” profiling (for implementors)
6. Advice on: sooner, faster, smaller, thriftier
6.1. Sooner: producing a program more quickly
6.2. Faster: producing a program that runs quicker
6.3. Smaller: producing a program that is smaller
6.4. Thriftier: producing a program that gobbles less heap space
7. GHC Language Features
7.1. Language options
7.2. Unboxed types and primitive operations
7.2.1. Unboxed types
7.2.2. Unboxed Tuples
7.3. Syntactic extensions
7.3.1. Hierarchical Modules
7.3.2. Pattern guards
7.3.3. The recursive do-notation
7.3.4. Parallel List Comprehensions
7.3.5. Rebindable syntax
7.3.6. Postfix operators
7.4. Type system extensions
7.4.1. Data types and type synonyms
7.4.1.1. Data types with no constructors
7.4.1.2. Infix type constructors, classes, and type variables
7.4.1.3. Liberalised type synonyms
7.4.1.4. Existentially quantified data constructors
7.4.2. Class declarations
7.4.2.1. Multi-parameter type classes
7.4.2.2. The superclasses of a class declaration
7.4.2.3. Class method types
7.4.3. Functional dependencies
7.4.3.1. Rules for functional dependencies
7.4.3.2. Background on functional dependencies
7.4.4. Instance declarations
7.4.4.1. Relaxed rules for instance declarations
7.4.4.2. Undecidable instances
7.4.4.3. Overlapping instances
7.4.4.4. Type synonyms in the instance head
7.4.5. Type signatures
7.4.5.1. The context of a type signature
7.4.5.2. For-all hoisting
7.4.6. Implicit parameters
7.4.6.1. Implicit-parameter type constraints
7.4.6.2. Implicit-parameter bindings
7.4.6.3. Implicit parameters and polymorphic recursion
7.4.6.4. Implicit parameters and monomorphism
7.4.7. Explicitly-kinded quantification
7.4.8. Arbitrary-rank polymorphism
7.4.8.1. Examples
7.4.8.2. Type inference
7.4.8.3. Implicit quantification
7.4.9. Impredicative polymorphism
7.4.10. Lexically scoped type variables
7.4.10.1. Overview
7.4.10.2. Declaration type signatures
7.4.10.3. Expression type signatures
7.4.10.4. Pattern type signatures
7.4.10.5. Class and instance declarations
7.4.11. Deriving clause for classes Typeable and Data
7.4.12. Generalised derived instances for newtypes
7.4.12.1. Generalising the deriving clause
7.4.12.2. A more precise specification
7.4.13. Generalised typing of mutually recursive bindings
7.5. Generalised Algebraic Data Types (GADTs)
7.6. Template Haskell
7.6.1. Syntax
7.6.2. Using Template Haskell
7.6.3. A Template Haskell Worked Example
7.6.4. Using Template Haskell with Profiling
7.7. Arrow notation
7.7.1. do-notation for commands
7.7.2. Conditional commands
7.7.3. Defining your own control structures
7.7.4. Primitive constructs
7.7.5. Differences with the paper
7.7.6. Portability
7.8. Bang patterns
7.8.1. Informal description of bang patterns
7.8.2. Syntax and semantics
7.9. Assertions
7.10. Pragmas
7.10.1. DEPRECATED pragma
7.10.2. INCLUDE pragma
7.10.3. INLINE and NOINLINE pragmas
7.10.3.1. INLINE pragma
7.10.3.2. NOINLINE pragma
7.10.3.3. Phase control
7.10.4. LANGUAGE pragma
7.10.5. LINE pragma
7.10.6. OPTIONS_GHC pragma
7.10.7. RULES pragma
7.10.8. SPECIALIZE pragma
7.10.9. SPECIALIZE instance pragma
7.10.10. UNPACK pragma
7.11. Rewrite rules
7.11.1. Syntax
7.11.2. Semantics
7.11.3. List fusion
7.11.4. Specialisation
7.11.5. Controlling what's going on
7.11.6. CORE pragma
7.12. Special built-in functions
7.12.1. The seq function
7.12.2. The inline function
7.12.3. The lazy function
7.12.4. The unsafeCoerce# function
7.13. Generic classes
7.13.1. Using generics
7.13.2. Changes wrt the paper
7.13.3. Terminology and restrictions
7.13.4. Another example
7.14. Control over monomorphism
7.14.1. Switching off the dreaded Monomorphism Restriction
7.14.2. Monomorphic pattern bindings
7.15. Concurrent and Parallel Haskell
7.15.1. Concurrent Haskell
7.15.2. Software Transactional Memory
7.15.3. Parallel Haskell
7.15.4. Annotating pure code for parallelism
8. Foreign function interface (FFI)
8.1. GHC extensions to the FFI Addendum
8.1.1. Unboxed types
8.1.2. Newtype wrapping of the IO monad
8.2. Using the FFI with GHC
8.2.1. Using foreign export and foreign import ccall "wrapper" with GHC
8.2.1.1. Using your own main()
8.2.1.2. Using foreign import ccall "wrapper" with GHC
8.2.2. Using function headers
8.2.2.1. Finding Header files
8.2.3. Memory Allocation
9. What to do when something goes wrong
9.1. When the compiler “does the wrong thing”
9.2. When your program “does the wrong thing”
10. Other Haskell utility programs
10.1. Ctags and Etags for Haskell: hasktags
10.1.1. Using tags with your editor
10.2. “Yacc for Haskell”: happy
10.3. Writing Haskell interfaces to C code: hsc2hs
10.3.1. command line syntax
10.3.2. Input syntax
10.3.3. Custom constructs
11. Running GHC on Win32 systems
11.1. Starting GHC on Windows platforms
11.2. Running GHCi on Windows
11.3. Interacting with the terminal
11.4. Differences in library behaviour
11.5. Using GHC (and other GHC-compiled executables) with cygwin
11.5.1. Background
11.5.2. The problem
11.5.3. Things to do
11.6. Building and using Win32 DLLs
11.6.1. Creating a DLL
11.6.2. Making DLLs to be called from other languages
12. Known bugs and infelicities
12.1. Haskell 98 vs. Glasgow Haskell: language non-compliance
12.1.1. Divergence from Haskell 98
12.1.1.1. Lexical syntax
12.1.1.2. Context-free syntax
12.1.1.3. Expressions and patterns
12.1.1.4. Declarations and bindings
12.1.1.5. Module system and interface files
12.1.1.6. Numbers, basic types, and built-in classes
12.1.1.7. In Prelude support
12.1.2. GHC's interpretation of undefined behaviour in Haskell 98
12.2. Known bugs or infelicities
12.2.1. Bugs in GHC
12.2.2. Bugs in GHCi (the interactive GHC)
Index