Sunday, October 21, 2018

Announcing Profiterole - GHC Profile Viewer

Summary: profiterole reformats GHC profile reports so they are easier to read.

Do you often work with GHC time profiling reports? Do you find them excessively long and hard to navigate? Profiterole reads standard GHC .prof files and generates both textual and HTML reports which are typically more than 10x smaller. As an example compare HLint profile input to HLint Profiterole output.

Usage

To run, first install (cabal update && cabal install profiterole), generate a GHC profile the normal way, then run:

profiterole myprogram.prof

Profiterole will generate myprogram.profiterole.txt and myprogram.profiterole.html - both contain the same information, but the HTML has hyperlinks. There are three columns of numbers:

  • TOT is the total time spent in any item under this code, what GHC calls inherited time.
  • INH is the total time spent in the items that Profiterole did not move out to the top level.
  • IND is the individual time, just like GHC profiles.

For large programs, using +RTS -P (instead of the common -p) will give more accurate results.

How it works

Profiterole aims to make the profile shorter by combining common subtrees and lifting them to the root - e.g. if you call parseFile from 7 places in the code, instead of having 7 pieces of parseFile profiling, Profiterole will give you one. With only 1 place containing parseFile, it's easier to optimise parseFile, and it's easier to read the code calling it without getting lost in the internals.

How to profile

Given profile data, different ways of looking at it reveal different insights, and the ones discovered by Profiterole have definitely had value. I tend to use:

  • I first use Profiteur to get an overall sense of where the time is going visually. Profiteur lets me orientate myself, but tends to be a little difficult to drill into the details and repeat experiments.
  • I then use Profiterole to see if there were any repeated pieces of code Profiteur missed, and then dig into the details using Profiterole.
  • Only if I'm really going into the details do I go to the GHC .prof output - it's pretty rare.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Announcing Shake 0.17

I'm delighted to announce Shake 0.17. As always, the full changelog is on GitHub, but I'd like to highlight three areas that have seen most attention.

Error Messages

Error messages now support GHC's HasCallStack feature, giving code locations in error messages. As an example, let's define rules for both *.txt and overlap.*, then try and build overlap.txt. With Shake 0.17 we get the far more informative error:

Error when running Shake build system:
at Example.hs:50:46-55:
* Depends on: overlap.txt
* Raised the exception:
Build system error - key matches multiple rules:
Key type:       FileQ
Key value:      overlap.txt
Rules matched:  2
Rule 1:         "overlap.*" %> at Example::21:94-106:
Rule 2:         ".txt" %> at Example::24:94-106:
Modify your rules so only one can produce the above key

We can see where the dependency was introduced (line 50), where the rules were defined (lines 21 and 24), and what their patterns were.

The Database module

The new module Development.Shake.Database provides operations for working with open Shake databases - meaning you can now open the database, run some actions against, and shut it. Unlike before, you can now run against an open database repeatedly, and query the resulting database for live or erroneous files. When combined with the new feature that /dev/null for shakeFiles results in no on-disk representation of Shake, you can create an in-memory database, execute it many times, then throw it away. These features aren't targetted at build systems, but allow reuse of Shake in other domains.

If you are using the Database module, and have a way to observe changes interactively, the deprioritize function may be of use, to cause Shake to build some unimportant rules last.

This work was supported by Digital Asset.

Changes to Builtin Rules

Most users shouldn't need to define their own types of rules, but for those who do, the biggest improvement is probably the better documentation in Development.Shake.Rule, complete with a worked example. At the same time, the builtin rules have changed slightly in incompatible ways - the docs explain the new state. These changes are intended to set the stage for Cloud Shake, following the pattern described in Build Systems a la Carte. I hope that a forthcoming release of Shake will provide an actual implementation of Cloud Shake.

Tuesday, October 02, 2018

Full-time Haskell jobs in Zürich/New York, at Digital Asset

UPDATE: All positions have been filled.

Summary: We're hiring 3 Haskell programmers and a few other roles too.

I am currently working at Digital Asset, working on our DAML programming language. We're seeking 3 additional Haskell programmers to join, 2 in New York and 1 in Zurich (remote work is not currently an option). There are also a ton of other jobs on our website, including Formal Methods and nix + some Haskell Build Engineering (also available at a more junior level).

What we do

We have built DAML, the Digital Asset Modelling Language, which is the centerpiece of our distributed ledger technology. DAML is a contract language that consists of a strongly-typed purely functional core extended with domain specific constructs to express the flow of rights and obligations underlying today's multi-party business processes. Application Developers using DAML and our distributed ledger technology are supported by the DAML SDK. It provides a type-safe integration of DAML with existing technology like Java, Scala, XML and SQL, and contains DAML Studio, which provides a modern IDE experience to develop, test, and analyse DAML programs.

Working on the Language Engineering team with Digital Asset involves partnering with people around the world (we have centers in New York, Zurich and Sydney), working with exciting new technology, where many of the answers haven't yet been figured out, producing solutions for clients, such as replacing the settlement and clearing platform of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), and making sure the end result has the quality required for robust usage. It's challenging work, but the impact could be huge.

What we require

We're looking for the best functional programmers out there, with a strong bias towards Haskell. If not Haskell, then Scala is useful, as other teams in the company write Scala. However, we've hired ML/F# programmers too, with good results. In particular we want:
  • Experienced functional programmer. Either some open-source libraries (Hackage/GitHub) or commercial experience.
  • Writes good, clean, effective code.
  • Existing compiler development experience is useful, if it's with GHC then even better.
We do not require any existing blockchain/DLT/finance knowledge.

How to apply

To apply, email neil.mitchell AT digitalasset.com with a copy of your CV. If you have any questions, email me.
The best way to assess technical ability is to look at code people have written. If you have any packages on Hackage or things on GitHub, please point me at the best projects. If your best code is not publicly available, please describe the Haskell projects you've been involved in.