this behaviour in part duplicates the work of `-O`, but it's lighter-weight, and
it's often more convenient to debug code without `-O` (which still has impact on
traces generation) ; and this removes one or two levels of obfuscation when you
read the intermediate code.
in particular, this avoids regression with reused struct fields getting renamed
with indices, which would have required changes in e.g.
`french_law/ocaml/bench.ml`
Previously we had some heuristics in the backends trying to achieve this with a
lot of holes ; this should be much more solid, relying on `Bindlib` to do the
correct renamings.
**Note1**: it's not plugged into the backends other than OCaml at the moment.
**Note2**: the related, obsolete heuristics haven't been cleaned out yet
**Note3**: we conservatively suppose a single namespace at the moment. This is
required for e.g. Python, but it forces vars named like struct fields to be
renamed, which is more verbose in e.g. OCaml. The renaming engine could be
improved to support different namespaces, with a way to select how to route the
different kinds of identifiers into them.
Similarly, customisation for what needs to be uppercase or lowercase is not
available yet.
**Note4**: besides excluding keywords, we should also be careful to exclude (or
namespace):
- the idents used in the runtime (e.g. `o_add_int_int`)
- the dynamically generated idents (e.g. `embed_*`)
**Note5**: module names themselves aren't handled yet. The reason is that they
must be discoverable by the user, and even need to match the filenames, etc. In
other words, imagine that `Mod` is a keyword in the target language. You can't
rename a module called `Mod` to `Mod1` without knowing the whole module context,
because that would destroy the mapping for a module already called `Mod1`.
A reliable solution would be to translate all module names to e.g.
`CatalaModule_*`, which we can assume will never conflict with any built-in, and
forbid idents starting with that prefix. We may also want to restrict their
names to ASCII ? Currently we use a projection, but what if I have two modules
called `Là` and `La` ?
HandleExceptions only takes an array of exceptions, and returns Some if only one
of them is Some, None if they are all None, or raises a conflict error
otherwise.
The compilation of default terms then wraps this in a match (for the result of
HandleExceptions), and an if-then-else (for the justification-consequence in the
None case).
This avoids the complexity of having to handle thunked functions as arguments.
*Disclaimer*: This is intended for discussion
My impression is that the with-exceptions backend is to be superseded by the
without-exception backend, which is more general and more efficient. Therefore,
seeing the added complexity of maintaining the two in parallel, I see no good
reason to keep the with-exceptions version now that the equivalence of their
semantics have been proved.
It will also be nice to reduce divergences between the different backends ; and
this should make further simplifications possible (e.g. some thunkings may no
longer be needed)
Of course I am ready to hear arguments in favor of keeping it, be it in the mid-
or long-term.
This patch removes the `--avoid-exceptions` flag, making it the only option, and
the corresponding `with_exceptions` variant of the dcalc->lcalc translation. It
doesn't do further simplifications.
it's much simpler to handle down the line if they have a uniform structure;
empty tuples are easily converted into unit types when translating to OCaml.
Support for manipulating toplevel functions as values was buggy, because the
recursion after eta-expansion would fall into the pattern for a `let..in` and
not do the expected transformation.
The patch explicitely builds the closure in that case, avoiding such issues with
recursion.
some of the types (in particular, in hoisted closures) could not be
reconstructed afterwards. This properly propagates the types, including to
closure deconstruction time, giving additional insurance; and allowing
monomorphisation not to choke on the result.
NOTE: This is a temporary solution
A future approach could be to have Catala generate a module loader (with the
proper hash), relieving the user implementation from having to do the
registration.
This includes a few separate changes:
- pass visibility information of declarations (depending on wether the
declaration was in a ```catala-metadata block or not)
- add reasonable hash computation functions to discriminate the interfaces. In
particular:
* Uids have a `hash` function that depends on their string, but not on their
actual uid (which is not stable between runs of the compiler) ; the existing
`hash` function and its uses have been renamed to `id`.
* The `Hash` module provides the tools to properly combine hashes, etc. While
we rely on `Hashtbl.hash` for the atoms, we take care not to use it on any
recursive structure (it relies on a bounded traversal).
- insert the hashes in the artefacts, and properly check and report those (for
OCaml)
**Remains to do**:
- Record and check the hashes in the other backends
- Provide a way to get stable inline-test outputs in the presence of module
hashes
- Provide a way to write external modules that don't break at every Catala
update.
mostly reverting to the ones the interpreter was printing ; for the case of
divisions, we choose to point to the denominator instead of the operator as it's
where the only possible error (division by zero) comes from.
- Clearly distinguish Exceptions from Errors. The only catchable exception
available in our AST is `EmptyError`, so the corresponding nodes are made less
generic, and a node `FatalError` is added
- Runtime errors are defined as a specific type in the OCaml runtime, with a
carrier exception and printing functions. These are used throughout, and
consistently by the interpreter. They always carry a position, that can be
converted to be printed with the fancy compiler location printer, or in a
simpler way from the backends.
- All operators that might be subject to an error take a position as argument,
in order to print an informative message without relying on backtraces from
the backend
- This adds a `catala depends` command that recursively tracks module dependency.
It can then be used by Clerk for linking.
- Generation of cmo object files are added for OCaml (we only built native
objects, but jsoo requires bytecode).
- Some fixes to the generation of value embed/deembed shims (related to types
coming from different modules ; add support for options ; etc.)
Print to json directly rather than depend on yojson and a ppx.
Note: this should be tested with the website in order to validate that the Json
output is 1-to-1.
(a second step could be to simplify this output, now that it's manual)
so don't retype after monomorphisation, which is now possible as the pass itself
correctly preserves types.
In time the typer will need a special case to get knowledge of the new types and
modified operator types.
