This is taken to mean: “Please compile quickly; I'm not over-bothered about compiled-code quality.” So, for example: ghc -c Foo.hs

Means “turn off all optimisation”, reverting to the same settings as if no -O options had been specified. Saying -O0 can be useful if eg. make has inserted a -O on the command line already.

Means: “Generate good-quality code without taking too long about it.” Thus, for example: ghc -c -O Main.lhs

Means: “Apply every non-dangerous optimisation, even if it means significantly longer compile times.”

The avoided “dangerous” optimisations are those that can make runtime or space worse if you're unlucky. They are normally turned on or off individually.

At the moment, -O2 is unlikely to produce better code than -O.

On by default.. Enables the common-sub-expression elimination optimisation. Switching this off can be useful if you have some unsafePerformIO expressions that you don't want commoned-up.

On by default.. Switch on the strictness analyser. There is a very old paper about GHC's strictness analyser, Measuring the effectiveness of a simple strictness analyser, but the current one is quite a bit different.

The strictness analyser figures out when arguments and variables in a function can be treated 'strictly' (that is they are always evaluated in the function at some point). This allow GHC to apply certain optimisations such as unboxing that otherwise don't apply as they change the semantics of the program when applied to lazy arguments.

This option causes all constructor fields which are marked strict (i.e. “!”) to be unpacked if possible. It is equivalent to adding an UNPACK pragma to every strict constructor field (see Section 7.18.10, “UNPACK pragma”).

This option is a bit of a sledgehammer: it might sometimes make things worse. Selectively unboxing fields by using UNPACK pragmas might be better. An alternative is to use -funbox-strict-fields to turn on unboxing by default but disable it for certain constructor fields using the NOUNPACK pragma (see Section 7.18.11, “NOUNPACK pragma”).

Off by default, but enabled by -O2. Turn on call-pattern specialisation; see Call-pattern specialisation for Haskell programs.

This optimisation specializes recursive functions according to their argument "shapes". This is best explained by example so consider:

last :: [a] -> a
last [] = error "last"
last (x : []) = x
last (x : xs) = last xs

In this code, once we pass the initial check for an empty list we know that in the recursive case this pattern match is redundant. As such -fspec-constr will transform the above code to:

last :: [a] -> a
last []       = error "last"
last (x : xs) = last' x xs
    where
      last' x []       = x
      last' x (y : ys) = last' y ys

As well avoid unnecessary pattern matching it also helps avoid unnecessary allocation. This applies when a argument is strict in the recursive call to itself but not on the initial entry. As strict recursive branch of the function is created similar to the above example.

On by default. Specialise each type-class-overloaded function defined in this module for the types at which it is called in this module. Also specialise imported functions that have an INLINABLE pragma (Section 7.18.5.2, “INLINABLE pragma”) for the types at which they are called in this module.

Turn on the static argument transformation, which turns a recursive function into a non-recursive one with a local recursive loop. See Chapter 7 of Andre Santos's PhD thesis

On by default. Float let-bindings inwards, nearer their binding site. See Let-floating: moving bindings to give faster programs (ICFP'96).

This optimisation moves let bindings closer to their use site. The benefit here is that this may avoid unnecessary allocation if the branch the let is now on is never executed. It also enables other optimisation passes to work more effectively as they have more information locally.

This optimisation isn't always beneficial though (so GHC applies some heuristics to decide when to apply it). The details get complicated but a simple example is that it is often beneficial to move let bindings outwards so that multiple let bindings can be grouped into a larger single let binding, effectively batching their allocation and helping the garbage collector and allocator.

On by default. Run the full laziness optimisation (also known as let-floating), which floats let-bindings outside enclosing lambdas, in the hope they will be thereby be computed less often. See Let-floating: moving bindings to give faster programs (ICFP'96). Full laziness increases sharing, which can lead to increased memory residency.

NOTE: GHC doesn't implement complete full-laziness. When optimisation in on, and -fno-full-laziness is not given, some transformations that increase sharing are performed, such as extracting repeated computations from a loop. These are the same transformations that a fully lazy implementation would do, the difference is that GHC doesn't consistently apply full-laziness, so don't rely on it.

On by default. Eta-expand let-bindings to increase their arity.

On by default. Eta-reduce lambda expressions, if doing so gets rid of a whole group of lambdas.

On by default. Merge immediately-nested case expressions that scrutinse the same variable. Example

  case x of
     Red -> e1
     _   -> case x of 
              Blue -> e2
              Green -> e3
==>
  case x of
     Red -> e1
     Blue -> e2
     Green -> e2

Off by default, but enabled by -O2. Turn on the liberate-case transformation. This unrolls recursive function once in its own RHS, to avoid repeated case analysis of free variables. It's a bit like the call-pattern specialiser (-fspec-constr) but for free variables rather than arguments.

A very experimental flag that makes dictionary-valued expressions seem cheap to the optimiser.

Usually GHC black-holes a thunk only when it switches threads. This flag makes it do so as soon as the thunk is entered. See Haskell on a shared-memory multiprocessor.

Turn off the "state hack" whereby any lambda with a State# token as argument is considered to be single-entry, hence it is considered OK to inline things inside it. This can improve performance of IO and ST monad code, but it runs the risk of reducing sharing.

Make GHC be more precise about its treatment of bottom (but see also -fno-state-hack). In particular, stop GHC eta-expanding through a case expression, which is good for performance, but bad if you are using seq on partial applications.

GHC's optimiser can diverge if you write rewrite rules ( Section 7.19, “Rewrite rules ”) that don't terminate, or (less satisfactorily) if you code up recursion through data types (Section 14.2.1, “Bugs in GHC”). To avoid making the compiler fall into an infinite loop, the optimiser carries a "tick count" and stops inlining and applying rewrite rules when this count is exceeded. The limit is set as a multiple of the program size, so bigger programs get more ticks. The -fsimpl-tick-factor flag lets you change the multiplier. The default is 100; numbers larger than 100 give more ticks, and numbers smaller than 100 give fewer.

If the tick-count expires, GHC summarises what simplifier steps it has done; you can use -fddump-simpl-stats to generate a much more detailed list. Usually that identifies the loop quite accurately, because some numbers are very large.

(Default: 45) Governs the maximum size that GHC will allow a function unfolding to be. (An unfolding has a “size” that reflects the cost in terms of “code bloat” of expanding (aka inlining) that unfolding at a call site. A bigger function would be assigned a bigger cost.)

Consequences: (a) nothing larger than this will be inlined (unless it has an INLINE pragma); (b) nothing larger than this will be spewed into an interface file.

Increasing this figure is more likely to result in longer compile times than faster code. The -funfolding-use-threshold is more useful.

(Default: 8) This is the magic cut-off figure for unfolding (aka inlining): below this size, a function definition will be unfolded at the call-site, any bigger and it won't. The size computed for a function depends on two things: the actual size of the expression minus any discounts that apply (see -funfolding-con-discount).

The difference between this and -funfolding-creation-threshold is that this one determines if a function definition will be inlined at a call site. The other option determines if a function definition will be kept around at all for potential inlining.

An experimental flag to expose all unfoldings, even for very large or recursive functions. This allows for all functions to be inlined while usually GHC would avoid inlining larger functions.

Data Parallel Haskell.

Data Parallel Haskell.

Off by default, but enabled by -O2. Only applies in combination with the native code generator. Use the graph colouring register allocator for register allocation in the native code generator. By default, GHC uses a simpler, faster linear register allocator. The downside being that the linear register allocator usually generates worse code.

Off by default, only applies in combination with the native code generator. Use the iterative coalescing graph colouring register allocator for register allocation in the native code generator. This is the same register allocator as the -freg-graph one but also enables iterative coalescing during register allocation.

When this option is given, intermediate floating point values can have a greater precision/range than the final type. Generally this is a good thing, but some programs may rely on the exact precision/range of Float/Double values and should not use this option for their compilation.

Note that the 32-bit x86 native code generator only supports excess-precision mode, so neither -fexcess-precision nor -fno-excess-precision has any effect. This is a known bug, see Section 14.2.1, “Bugs in GHC”.

Causes GHC to ignore uses of the function Exception.assert in source code (in other words, rewriting Exception.assert p e to e (see Section 7.17, “Assertions ”). This flag is turned on by -O.

Tells GHC to ignore all inessential information when reading interface files. That is, even if M.hi contains unfolding or strictness information for a function, GHC will ignore that information.

Tells GHC to omit all inessential information from the interface file generated for the module being compiled (say M). This means that a module importing M will see only the types of the functions that M exports, but not their unfoldings, strictness info, etc. Hence, for example, no function exported by M will be inlined into an importing module. The benefit is that modules that import M will need to be recompiled less often (only when M's exports change their type, not when they change their implementation).