Note [foldTM determinism]

GHC/Data/TrieMap.hs:165 compiler

We want foldTM to be deterministic, which is why we have an instance of
TrieMap for UniqDFM, but not for UniqFM. Here's an example of some things that
go wrong if foldTM is nondeterministic. Consider:

  f a b = return (a <> b)

Depending on the order that the typechecker generates constraints you
get either:

  f :: (Monad m, Monoid a) => a -> a -> m a

or:

  f :: (Monoid a, Monad m) => a -> a -> m a

The generated code will be different after desugaring as the dictionaries
will be bound in different orders, leading to potential ABI incompatibility.

One way to solve this would be to notice that the typeclasses could be
sorted alphabetically.

Unfortunately that doesn't quite work with this example:

  f a b = let x = a <> a; y = b <> b in x

where you infer:

  f :: (Monoid m, Monoid m1) => m1 -> m -> m1

or:

  f :: (Monoid m1, Monoid m) => m1 -> m -> m1

Here you could decide to take the order of the type variables in the type
according to depth first traversal and use it to order the constraints.

The real trouble starts when the user enables incoherent instances and
the compiler has to make an arbitrary choice. Consider:

  class T a b where
    go :: a -> b -> String

  instance (Show b) => T Int b where
    go a b = show a ++ show b

  instance (Show a) => T a Bool where
    go a b = show a ++ show b

  f = go 10 True

GHC is free to choose either dictionary to implement f, but for the sake of
determinism we'd like it to be consistent when compiling the same sources
with the same flags.

inert_dicts :: DictMap is implemented with a TrieMap. In getUnsolvedInerts it
gets converted to a bag of (Wanted) Cts using a fold. Then in
solve_simple_wanteds it's merged with other WantedConstraints. We want the
conversion to a bag to be deterministic. For that purpose we use UniqDFM
instead of UniqFM to implement the TrieMap.

See Note [Deterministic UniqFM] in GHC.Types.Unique.DFM for more details on how it's made
deterministic.

References 1

Referenced by 1