GHC exposes its internal APIs to users through the built-in ghc package. It allows you to write programs that leverage GHC's entire compilation driver, in order to analyze or compile Haskell code programmatically. Furthermore, GHC gives users the ability to load compiler plugins during compilation - modules which are allowed to view and change GHC's internal intermediate representation, Core. Plugins are suitable for things like experimental optimizations or analysis, and offer a lower barrier of entry to compiler development for many common cases. Furthermore, GHC offers a lightweight annotation mechanism that you can use to annotate your source code with metadata, which you can later inspect with either the compiler API or a compiler plugin. Annotations are small pragmas that allow you to attach data to identifiers in source code, which are persisted when compiled. These pieces of data can then inspected and utilized when using GHC as a library or writing a compiler plugin. ANN Any expression that has both Typeable and Data instances may be attached to a top-level value binding using an ANN pragma. In particular, this means you can use ANN to annotate data constructors (e.g. Just) as well as normal values (e.g. take). By way of example, to annotate the function foo with the annotation Just "Hello" you would do this: {-# ANN foo (Just "Hello") #-} foo = ... A number of restrictions apply to use of annotations: The binder being annotated must be at the top level (i.e. no nested binders) The binder being annotated must be declared in the current module The expression you are annotating with must have a type with Typeable and Data instances The Template Haskell staging restrictions apply to the expression being annotated with, so for example you cannot run a function from the module being compiled. To be precise, the annotation {-# ANN x e #-} is well staged if and only if $(e) would be (disregarding the usual type restrictions of the splice syntax, and the usual restriction on splicing inside a splice - $([|1|]) is fine as an annotation, albeit redundant). If you feel strongly that any of these restrictions are too onerous, please give the GHC team a shout. However, apart from these restrictions, many things are allowed, including expressions which are not fully evaluated! Annotation expressions will be evaluated by the compiler just like Template Haskell splices are. So, this annotation is fine: {-# ANN f SillyAnnotation { foo = (id 10) + $([| 20 |]), bar = 'f } #-} f = ... ANN type ANN You can annotate types with the ANN pragma by using the type keyword. For example: {-# ANN type Foo (Just "A `Maybe String' annotation") #-} data Foo = ... ANN module ANN You can annotate modules with the ANN pragma by using the module keyword. For example: {-# ANN module (Just "A `Maybe String' annotation") #-} The ghc package exposes most of GHC's frontend to users, and thus allows you to write programs that leverage it. This library is actually the same library used by GHC's internal, frontend compilation driver, and thus allows you to write tools that programmatically compile source code and inspect it. Such functionality is useful in order to write things like IDE or refactoring tools. As a simple example, here's a program which compiles a module, much like ghc itself does by default when invoked: import GHC import GHC.Paths ( libdir ) import DynFlags ( defaultDynFlags ) main = defaultErrorHandler defaultDynFlags $ do runGhc (Just libdir) $ do dflags <- getSessionDynFlags setSessionDynFlags dflags target <- guessTarget "test_main.hs" Nothing setTargets [target] load LoadAllTargets The argument to runGhc is a bit tricky. GHC needs this to find its libraries, so the argument must refer to the directory that is printed by ghc --print-libdir for the same version of GHC that the program is being compiled with. Above we therefore use the ghc-paths package which provides this for us. Compiling it results in: $ cat test_main.hs main = putStrLn "hi" $ ghc -package ghc simple_ghc_api.hs [1 of 1] Compiling Main ( simple_ghc_api.hs, simple_ghc_api.o ) Linking simple_ghc_api ... $ ./simple_ghc_api $ ./test_main hi $ For more information on using the API, as well as more samples and references, please see this Haskell.org wiki page. GHC has the ability to load compiler plugins at compile time. The feature is similar to the one provided by GCC, and allows users to write plugins that can inspect and modify the compilation pipeline, as well as transform and inspect GHC's intermediate language, Core. Plugins are suitable for experimental analysis or optimization, and require no changes to GHC's source code to use. Plugins cannot optimize/inspect C--, nor can they implement things like parser/front-end modifications like GCC. If you feel strongly that any of these restrictions are too onerous, please give the GHC team a shout. Plugins can be specified on the command line with the option -fplugin=module where module is a module in a registered package that exports a plugin. Arguments can be given to plugins with the command line option -fplugin-opt=module:args, where args are arguments interpreted by the plugin provided by module. As an example, in order to load the plugin exported by Foo.Plugin in the package foo-ghc-plugin, and give it the parameter "baz", we would invoke GHC like this: $ ghc -fplugin Foo.Plugin -fplugin-opt Foo.Plugin:baz Test.hs [1 of 1] Compiling Main ( Test.hs, Test.o ) Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done. Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done. Loading package base ... linking ... done. Loading package ffi-1.0 ... linking ... done. Loading package foo-ghc-plugin-0.1 ... linking ... done. ... Linking Test ... $ Since plugins are exported by registered packages, it's safe to put dependencies on them in cabal for example, and specify plugin arguments to GHC through the ghc-options field. Plugins are modules that export at least a single identifier, plugin, of type GhcPlugins.Plugin. All plugins should import GhcPlugins as it defines the interface to the compilation pipeline. A Plugin effectively holds a function which installs a compilation pass into the compiler pipeline. By default there is the empty plugin which does nothing, GhcPlugins.defaultPlugin, which you should override with record syntax to specify your installation function. Since the exact fields of the Plugin type are open to change, this is the best way to ensure your plugins will continue to work in the future with minimal interface impact. Plugin exports a field, installCoreToDos which is a function of type [CommandLineOption] -> [CoreToDo] -> CoreM [CoreToDo]. A CommandLineOption is effectively just String, and a CoreToDo is basically a function of type Core -> Core. A CoreToDo gives your pass a name and runs it over every compiled module when you invoke GHC. As a quick example, here is a simple plugin that just does nothing and just returns the original compilation pipeline, unmodified, and says 'Hello': module DoNothing.Plugin (plugin) where import GhcPlugins plugin :: Plugin plugin = defaultPlugin { installCoreToDos = install } install :: [CommandLineOption] -> [CoreToDo] -> CoreM [CoreToDo] install _ todo = do reinitializeGlobals putMsgS "Hello!" return todo Provided you compiled this plugin and registered it in a package (with cabal for instance,) you can then use it by just specifying -fplugin=DoNothing.Plugin on the command line, and during the compilation you should see GHC say 'Hello'. Note carefully the reinitializeGlobals call at the beginning of the installation function. Due to bugs in the windows linker dealing with libghc, this call is necessary to properly ensure compiler plugins have the same global state as GHC at the time of invocation. Without reinitializeGlobals, compiler plugins can crash at runtime because they may require state that hasn't otherwise been initialized. In the future, when the linking bugs are fixed, reinitializeGlobals will be deprecated with a warning, and changed to do nothing. CoreToDo is effectively a data type that describes all the kinds of optimization passes GHC does on Core. There are passes for simplification, CSE, vectorisation, etc. There is a specific case for plugins, CoreDoPluginPass :: String -> PluginPass -> CoreToDo which should be what you always use when inserting your own pass into the pipeline. The first parameter is the name of the plugin, and the second is the pass you wish to insert. CoreM is a monad that all of the Core optimizations live and operate inside of. A plugin's installation function (install in the above example) takes a list of CoreToDos and returns a list of CoreToDo. Before GHC begins compiling modules, it enumerates all the needed plugins you tell it to load, and runs all of their installation functions, initially on a list of passes that GHC specifies itself. After doing this for every plugin, the final list of passes is given to the optimizer, and are run by simply going over the list in order. You should be careful with your installation function, because the list of passes you give back isn't questioned or double checked by GHC at the time of this writing. An installation function like the following: install :: [CommandLineOption] -> [CoreToDo] -> CoreM [CoreToDo] install _ _ = return [] is certainly valid, but also certainly not what anyone really wants. In the last section we saw that besides a name, a CoreDoPluginPass takes a pass of type PluginPass. A PluginPass is a synonym for (ModGuts -> CoreM ModGuts). ModGuts is a type that represents the one module being compiled by GHC at any given time. A ModGuts holds all of the module's top level bindings which we can examine. These bindings are of type CoreBind and effectively represent the binding of a name to body of code. Top-level module bindings are part of a ModGuts in the field mg_binds. Implementing a pass that manipulates the top level bindings merely needs to iterate over this field, and return a new ModGuts with an updated mg_binds field. Because this is such a common case, there is a function provided named bindsOnlyPass which lifts a function of type ([CoreBind] -> CoreM [CoreBind]) to type (ModGuts -> CoreM ModGuts). Continuing with our example from the last section, we can write a simple plugin that just prints out the name of all the non-recursive bindings in a module it compiles: module SayNames.Plugin (plugin) where import GhcPlugins plugin :: Plugin plugin = defaultPlugin { installCoreToDos = install } install :: [CommandLineOption] -> [CoreToDo] -> CoreM [CoreToDo] install _ todo = do reinitializeGlobals return (CoreDoPluginPass "Say name" pass : todo) pass :: ModGuts -> CoreM ModGuts pass = bindsOnlyPass (mapM printBind) where printBind :: CoreBind -> CoreM CoreBind printBind bndr@(NonRec b _) = do putMsgS $ "Non-recursive binding named " ++ showSDoc (ppr b) return bndr printBind bndr = return bndr Previously we discussed annotation pragmas (), which we mentioned could be used to give compiler plugins extra guidance or information. Annotations for a module can be retrieved by a plugin, but you must go through the modules ModGuts in order to get it. Because annotations can be arbitrary instances of Data and Typeable, you need to give a type annotation specifying the proper type of data to retrieve from the interface file, and you need to make sure the annotation type used by your users is the same one your plugin uses. For this reason, we advise distributing annotations as part of the package which also provides compiler plugins if possible. To get the annotations of a single binder, you can use `getAnnotations` and specify the proper type. Here's an example that will print out the name of any top-level non-recursive binding with the SomeAnn annotation: {-# LANGUAGE DeriveDataTypeable #-} module SayAnnNames.Plugin (plugin, SomeAnn) where import GhcPlugins import Control.Monad (when) import Data.Data import Data.Typeable data SomeAnn = SomeAnn deriving (Data, Typeable) plugin :: Plugin plugin = defaultPlugin { installCoreToDos = install } install :: [CommandLineOption] -> [CoreToDo] -> CoreM [CoreToDo] install _ todo = do reinitializeGlobals return (CoreDoPluginPass "Say name" pass : todo) pass :: ModGuts -> CoreM ModGuts pass g = mapM_ (printAnn g) (mg_binds g) >> return g where printAnn :: ModGuts -> CoreBind -> CoreM CoreBind printAnn guts bndr@(NonRec b _) = do anns <- annotationsOn guts b :: CoreM [SomeAnn] when (not $ null anns) $ putMsgS $ "Annotated binding found: " ++ showSDoc (ppr b) return bndr printAnn _ bndr = return bndr annotationsOn :: Data a => ModGuts -> CoreBndr -> CoreM [a] annotationsOn guts bndr = do anns <- getAnnotations deserializeWithData guts return $ lookupWithDefaultUFM anns [] (varUnique bndr) Please see the GHC API documentation for more about how to use internal APIs, etc.