The work done by the partial evaluator is now divied in two stages:
- A static "term traversal" stage that happens only once per term and uses
only statically known information. In particular, the values of lambda bound
variables are unknown during this stage. Some tables are transformed to
reduce the cost of pattern matching.
- A dynamic "function application" stage, where function bodies can be
evaluated repeatedly with different arguments, without the term traversal
overhead and without recomputing statically known information.
Also the treatment of predefined functions has been reworked to take advantage
of the staging and better handle partial applications.
* Evaluate operators once, not every time they are looked up
* Remember the list of parameter values instead of recomputing it from the
pattern type every time a table selection is made.
* Quick fix for partial application of some predefined functions.
* -new-comp (the new partial evaluator) is now chosen by default when you run
cabal install (or cabal configure). To revert to using the old partial
evaluator by default, use "cabal install -f-new-comp" (or
"cabal configure -f-new-comp").
* Regardless of the configured default, you can choose which partial evaluator
to use when you invoke gf by using the -new-comp or -old-comp command line
option.
* The cc command in the GF shell uses the chosen partial evaluator by default,
but you can override this by using "cc -new" or "cc -old".
The plan is that these flags will be romeved in a future version.
GF.Compile.Compute.ConcreteNew + two new modules contain a new
partial evaluator intended to solve some performance problems with the old
partial evalutator in GF.Compile.Compute.ConcreteLazy. It has been around for
a while, but is now complete enough to compile the RGL and the Phrasebook.
The old partial evaluator is still used by default. The new one can be activated
in two ways:
- by using the command line option -new-comp when invoking GF.
- by using cabal configure -fnew-comp to make -new-comp the default. In this
case you can also use the command line option -old-comp to revert to the old
partial evaluator.
In the GF shell, the cc command uses the old evaluator regardless of -new-comp
for now, but you can use "cc -new ..." to invoke the new evaluator.
With -new-comp, computations happen in GF.Compile.GeneratePMCFG instead of
GF.Compile.Optimize. This is implemented by testing the flag optNewComp in
both modules, to omit calls to the old partial evaluator from GF.Compile.Optimize
and add calls to the new partial evaluator in GF.Compile.GeneratePMCFG.
This also means that -new-comp effectively implies -noexpand.
In GF.Compile.CheckGrammar, there is a check that restricted inheritance is used
correctly. However, when -noexpand is used, this check causes unexpected errors,
so it has been converted to generate warnings, for now.
-new-comp no longer enables the new type checker in
GF.Compile.Typeckeck.ConcreteNew.
The GF version number has been bumped to 3.3.10-darcs
+ The restrictions on arbitrary IO when GF is running in restricted mode is now
enforced in the types.
+ This hopefully also solves an intermittent problem when accessing the GF
shell through the web API provided by gf -server. This was visible in the
Simple Translation Tool and probably caused by some low-level bug in the
GHC IO libraries.
This speeds up the compilation of PhrasebookFin.pgf by 12%, mosly by speeding
up calls to lookupModule in calls from lookupParamValues, in calls
from allParamValues.
The invariant "modules are stored in dependency order" is no longer respected!
But the type MGrammar is now abstract, making it easier to maintain this or
other invariants in the future.
This quick fix should make Ctrl-C in the GF shell behave more like it does in
other shells: even if no command is running, Ctrl-C now just gives you a new
prompt instead of terminating the shell.
The command "gf -server" now starts a simple HTTP server on port 41295,
providing a simple web API to the GF compiler. It currently support the
follwing operations:
* creating new temporary directories for grammar uploads,
* uploading grammars files for use in the GF shell,
* executing GF shell commands, and
* accessing static files.
This means that GF now depends on some additional networking related packages,
but they should be available and easy to install on all platforms. There is
also a new configuration flag "server" in gf.cabal, so GF will be compiled
without support for server mode if the extra packages are unavailable.
Note that running gf -server while connected to the internet can be a security
risk. To prevent unauthorized access to the rest of the system, it is
advisable to run the server in GF_RESTRICTED mode and as a user with suitably
restricted file permissions.
By setting the environment variable GF_RESTRICTED before starting GF, the shell
will be run in restricted mode. This will prevent the GF shell from starting
arbitrary system commands (most uses of System.Cmd.system are blocked) and
writing arbitrary files (most commands that use writeFile et al are blocked).
Restricted mode is intended minimize the potential security risks involved
in allowing public access to the GF shell over the internet. It should be used
in conjuction with system level protection mechanisms (e.g. file permissions)
to make sure that a publicly acessible GF shell does not give access to parts
of the system that should not be publicly accessible.
