The project consists of GHC-WPC and the corresponding External STG IR and tooling.

GHC-WPC is an extended GHC that exports the STG IR (.o_stgbin) for the compiled modules and linker metadata (.ghc_stgapp) at application link time.

This repo uses GHC-WPC via stack, so no worries, stack will download it and do the setup automatically, but only on x64 Debian9, Ubuntu 16.04-17.10. If you use macOS or Windows you have to compile GHC-WPC manually. See the developer instructions below.
However external-stg package compiles with vanilla GHC also.

• Introducing GHC whole program compiler (GHC-WPC)
• GHC-WPC thread on ghc-devs mailing list

• gen-exe main compiler driver, it produces executable from .ghc_stgapp files.
• gen-obj compiles STG IR files .o_stgbin to object code .o. (gen-exe calls it)
• ext-stg CLI tool for external STG IR, it can pretty print .o_stgbin files.

There is a set of prepared applications in the ghc-wpc-sample-programs repository that you can compile easily to try out GHC-WPC. No special preparation needed if you use x64 Debian9, Ubuntu 16.04-17.10. It's only the regular stack based workflow.

The user of External STG is the one who does not alter the Ext-STG IR, instead just uses it via the external-stg package. I.e. external-stg-compiler is such an example.

Important: GHC-WPC has precompiled x64 Debian9, Ubuntu 16.04-17.10 binary release, so the install is straigtforward thanks to stack.

1. Clone this repository.

   git clone [email protected]:grin-compiler/ghc-whole-program-compiler-project.git
   

2. Install the external stg tooling with the following commands:

   (cd mod-pak ; stack install)
   stack --stack-root `pwd`/.stack-root install
   

   NOTE: the stack root is set to the local folder to prevent spamming the global stack sandbox.
3. Use gen-exe and ext-stg from terminal. (it should be in PATH due to the stack install)

• to make it easy to develop new backends for GHC without extending Cabal with new targets
• to facilitate compiler/PL research that needs real world programs to analyse
• to allow whole program analysis (new insights might be adopted to incremental compilers)
• to escape from GHC codebase to the mainstream Haskell UX/DX that allows to use any library
• to allow program observation with arbitrary precision
• to make it easy to focus on the compiler backend development without hacking GHC
• to allow other compilers to target GHC/STG and the feature rich RTS

If you change the External STG IR, then GHC-WPC must be recompiled. If you just would like to use Ext-STG IR in you project then please follow the (user) usage instructions.

0. Install (exact version):
   • GHC 8.8.3
   • happy 1.19.12
   • alex 3.2.5
1. Clone this repository.

   git clone --recursive [email protected]:grin-compiler/ghc-whole-program-compiler-project.git
   

2. Compile GHC-WPC in ./ghc-wpc folder with Hadrian (see ghc.dev for details). e.g.

   ./boot
   ./configure
   hadrian/build-stack -j
   

3. Set the path to the local GHC-WPC build in the corresponding part of ./stack.yaml.
4. Install the external stg tooling with the following commands:

   (cd mod-pak ; stack install)
   stack --stack-root `pwd`/.stack-root install
   

   NOTE: the stack root is set to the local folder to prevent spamming the global stack sandbox.
5. Use gen-exe and ext-stg from terminal. (it should be in PATH due to the stack install)

Ext-STG IR

• export IdInfo