integer-simple by default

[Isaac Dupree]

On 02/21/10 13:14, Ian Lynagh wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 02:56:53PM -0500, Isaac Dupree wrote:
>> -what am I trying to accomplish (at least, performance-wise)?
>
> I think opinions are divided on this.
>
> Performance with word-sized Integer's is definitely important.

This is true.

We could start a discussion on the Libraries list -- although I'm sure 
it would also not reach a clear conclusion.

We could try to find out how large Integers get, in practice, in 
existing Haskell code (this may be difficult to find out).

We could make sure there's a good non-builtin-to-ghc GMP-binding library 
(Is there one? Is it even possible yet, in a way that doesn't conflict 
with GHC's builtin GMP?).  Then people would have a place to turn if 
they need GMP's performance for something particular.

>> -what might be a good low-level format? (And is it important to strew
>> unboxed ints all over the place, or is it fine to skip this and count on
>> the optimizer?)
>
> I think relying on the optimiser is OK, but don't forget that you don't
> have the standard (+) etc.

oh okay, interesting.  I think I'd best start by finding out where 
integer-simple lies in the dependency tree.

-Isaac