*Background* A few months ago I added -fexternal-interpreter to GHC:
- docs: http://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/ghci.html#ghc-flag--fexternal-interpreter - wiki, rationale: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/RemoteGHCi When -fexternal-interpreter is used, GHC runs interpreted code in a separate subprocess, and communicates with it using binary messages over a pipe. -fexternal-interpreter currently implements all of TH, quasi-quoting, annotations, and all the GHCi features except for some features of the debugger. It is also now implemented on Windows, thanks to Tamar Christina. *Proposal* I'd like to propose that going forward we commit to maintaining full support for -fexternal-interpreter, with a view to making it the default. Why? - -fexternal-interpreter will be a prerequisite for GHCJS support, so maintaining full support for TH in -fexternal-interpreter will ensure that everything that works with GHC works with GHCJS. - We will be able to make simplifications in GHC and the build system once -fexternal-interpreter is the default, because when compiling with -prof or -dynamic we won't have to compile things twice any more. - Ultimately we don't want to have two ways of doing everything, because that's harder to maintain. How? - I'll make all the TH and quasi-quoting tests run with and without -fexternal-interpreter, so it will break validate if one of these fails. *Why now?* There are some TH changes in the pipeline that will need special attention to work with -fexternal-interpreter. e.g. https://phabricator.haskell.org/D2286 and https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/TemplateHaskell/Introspective, so I'd like to raise it now so we can keep the issue in mind. Cheers Simon
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