5. How to use Backpack modules
Cabal and GHC jointly support Backpack, an extension to Haskell’s module system which makes it possible to parametrize a package over some modules, which can be instantiated later arbitrarily by a user. This means you can write a library to be agnostic over some data representation, and then instantiate it several times with different data representations. Like C++ templates, instantiated packages are recompiled for each instantiation, which means you do not pay any runtime cost for parametrizing packages in this way. Backpack modules are somewhat experimental; while fully supported by cabal-install, they are currently not supported by Stack.
A Backpack package is defined by use of the
library:signatures
field, or by (transitive) dependency on
a package that defines some requirements. To define a parametrized
package, define a signature file (file extension hsig
) that
specifies the signature of the module you want to parametrize over, and
add it to your Cabal file in the library:signatures
field.
signature Str where
data Str
concat :: [Str] -> Str
cabal-version: 2.2
name: parametrized
library
build-depends: base
signatures: Str
exposed-modules: MyModule
You can define any number of regular modules (e.g., MyModule
) that
import signatures and use them as regular modules.
If you are familiar with ML modules, you might now expect there to be
some way to apply the parametrized package with an implementation of
the Str
module to get a concrete instantiation of the package.
Backpack operates slightly differently with a concept of mix-in
linking, where you provide an implementation of Str
simply by
bringing another module into scope with the same name as the
requirement. For example, if you had a package str-impl
that provided a
module named Str
, instantiating parametrized
is as simple as
just depending on both str-impl
and parametrized
:
cabal-version: 2.2
name: combined
library
build-depends: base, str-impl, parametrized
Note that due to technical limitations, you cannot directly define
Str
in the combined
library; it must be placed in its own
library (you can use Sublibraries to conveniently
define a sub-library).
However, a more common situation is that your names don’t match up
exactly. The library:mixins
field can be used to rename
signatures and modules to line up names as necessary. If you have
a requirement Str
and an implementation Data.Text
, you can
line up the names in one of two ways:
Rename the requirement to match the implementation:
mixins: parametrized requires (Str as Data.Text)
Rename the implementation to match the requirement:
mixins: text (Data.Text as Str)
The library:mixins
field can also be used to disambiguate
between multiple instantiations of the same package; for each
instantiation of the package, give it a separate entry in mixins with
the requirements and provided modules renamed to be distinct.
cabal-version: 2.2
name: double-combined
library
build-depends: base, text, bytestring, parametrized
mixins:
parametrized (MyModule as MyModule.Text) requires (Str as Data.Text),
parametrized (MyModule as MyModule.BS) requires (Str as Data.ByteString)
Intensive use of Backpack sometimes involves creating lots of small
parametrized libraries; Sublibraries can be used
to define all of these libraries in a single package without having to
create many separate Cabal packages. You may also find it useful to use
library:reexported-modules
to reexport instantiated
libraries to Backpack-unware users (e.g., Backpack can be used entirely
as an implementation detail.)
Backpack imposes a limitation on Template Haskell that goes beyond the usual TH stage restriction: it’s not possible to splice TH code imported from a compilation unit that is still “indefinite”, that is, a unit for which some module signatures still haven’t been matched with implementations. The reason is that indefinite units are typechecked, but not compiled, so there’s no actual TH code to run while splicing. Splicing TH code from a definite compilation unit into an indefinite one works normally.
For more information about Backpack, check out the GHC wiki page.