[m-dev.] for review: polymorphic ground insts

[Fergus Henderson]

On 29-Sep-2000, David Overton <dmo at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> Options are:
> 	1.  Commit this change, change the library to make use of it,
> 	and live with the extra compilation time every time we
> 	bootstrap the library.
> 
> 	2.  Commit this change, but don't make use of it in the
> 	library.
> 
> 	3.  Wait for the rewrite of the mode system which will
> 	hopefully handle these sorts of things more efficiently.
> 
> What do people think about this?

We discussed this at the Mercury meeting today and agreed on option 2.
(Of course you should wait until the change has been reviewed before
committing it...)

The rationale was that committing it now will make it easier for
others to experiment with this feature, and to debug, understand,
and perhaps even fix the performance problem.  Since it doesn't
cause performance problems for code that doesn't use the new
feature, committing it now will not cause any trouble.

However, IMHO the feature should not be documented in the language
reference manual as a standard part of Mercury until we know how to
implement it efficiently.  Also perhaps the feature should only be
enabled if some compiler option is set.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh at 128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
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