Friends
One more update about GHC 6.12, concerning impredicative polymorphism.
GHC has had an experimental implementation of impredicative polymorphism for a
year or two now (flag -XImpredicativePolymorphism). But
a) The implementation is ridiculously complicated, and the complexity
is pervasive (in the type checker) rather than localized.
I'm very unhappy about this, especially as we add more stuff to
the type checker for type families.
b) The specification (type system) is well-defined [1], but is also pretty
complicated, and it's just too hard to predict which programs will
typecheck and which will not.
So it's time for a re-think. I propose to deprecate it in 6.12, and remove it
altogether in 6.14. We may by then have something else to put in its place.
(There is no lack of candidates [2,3,4]!)
Fortunately, I don't think a lot of people use the feature in anger. Please
yell if you *are* using impredicative polymorphism for something serious. But
if you are, we need to think of a workaround. The current situation seems
unsustainable.
Simon
[1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/boxy/
[2] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/crusso/qml/
[3] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/daan/pubs.html
[4] http://gallium.inria.fr/~remy/mlf/
_______________________________________________
Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
