Annotations in GHC

Starting with ghc-9.2.1, parse trees contain “annotations” (these are, for example, comments and the locations of keywords). This represents a non-trivial upgrade of GHC parse trees. If you work with GHC ASTs in your project, there will be no avoiding getting to know about them. This note is a summary overview of annotations: the where and how of their representations.

In-tree annotations enable exact-printing of GHC ASTs. This feature and the reformulation of the GHC AST with in-tree annotations to support it was conceived of and implemented by Alan Zimmerman (@alan_zimm). The achievement is of truly epic scale.

Annotations on syntactic elements

An EpaLocation is a span giving the exact location of a keyword in parsed source.

data EpaLocation = EpaSpan RealSrcSpan | EpaDelta DeltaPos
data DeltaPos = ...

The parser only inserts EpaSpans.

A DotFieldOcc arises in expressions like (.e) (field-selector) or a.e (field-selection) when OverloadedRecordDot is enabled. A DotFieldOcc value in the parse phase is associated with an AnnFieldLabel in its extension field (annotations in ghc-9.2.1 lean heavily on the facilities afforded by TTG). The AnnFieldLabel contains the location of the ‘.’. AnnFieldLabel is an “annotation type”. You’ll recognize annotation types (there are many) by the convention that their names are prefixed Ann.

-- GHC.Hs.Expr
data AnnFieldLabel
  = AnnFieldLabel {
      afDot :: Maybe EpaLocation
      }
type instance XCDotFieldOcc (GhcPass _) = EpAnn AnnFieldLabel

-- Language.Haskell.Syntax.Expr
data DotFieldOcc p
  = DotFieldOcc
    { dfoExt   :: XCDotFieldOcc p
    , dfoLabel :: XRec p FieldLabelString
    }
  | XDotFieldOcc !(XXDotFieldOcc p)

(What XRec p FieldLabelString means will be explained in the next section.)

Note that the extension field dfoExt doesn’t contain a “raw” AnnFieldLabel, rather, it contains an EpAnn AnnFieldLabel.

EPAnn, envelopes an annotation. It associates a base location for the start of the syntactic element containing the annotation along with any comments enclosed in the source span of the element to which the EPAnn is attached. EpAnnUnsed is used when an annotation is required but there’s no annotation available to envelope (e.g one obvious case being in generated code).

data EpAnn ann
  = EpAnn { entry :: Anchor
          , anns :: ann
          , comments :: EpAnnComments }
  | EpAnnNotUsed

data EpAnnComments = ...

It’s the Anchor type where the base location is held.

data Anchor = Anchor { anchor :: RealSrcSpan, anchor_op :: AnchorOperation }

data AnchorOperator = ...

Annotations on source spans

Annotations don’t just get attached to syntactic elements, they frequently get attached to source spans too.

data SrcSpanAnn' a = SrcSpanAnn { ann :: a, locA :: SrcSpan }

Usually SrcSpanAnn' is used with EpAnn and that combination is named a SrcAnn.

data SrcAnn ann = SrcSpanAnn' (EpAnn ann)

There are many annotation types. The most ubiquitous are AnnListItem, NameAnn, AnnList, AnnPragma and AnnContext. Their use is common enough that names are given to their SrcAnn types (which you recall, wrap them in EpAnn and associate them with a SrcSpan).

type SrcSpanAnnA = SrcAnn AnnListItem
type SrcSpanAnnN = SrcAnn NameAnn

type SrcSpanAnnL = SrcAnn AnnList
type SrcSpanAnnP = SrcAnn AnnPragma
type SrcSpanAnnC = SrcAnn AnnContext

Of these, SrcSpanAnnA is used as a sort of “default” annotation.

What do you do with generalized SrcSpan types like these? You locate things with them.

type LocatedA = GenLocated SrcSpanAnnA
type LocatedN = GenLocated SrcSpanAnnN

type LocatedL = GenLocated SrcSpanAnnL
type LocatedP = GenLocated SrcSpanAnnP
type LocatedC = GenLocated SrcSpanAnnC

These type synonyms are only for the most commonly used annoation types. The general case is LocatedAn an.

type LocatedAn an = GenLocated (SrcAnn an)

To recap, a LocatedAn an is a GenLocated (SrcAnn an) which is a GenLocated (SrcSpanAnn' (EpAnn an)).

Abstracting over locations

Syntax definitions are generalized with respect to location information. That is, rather than hard-coding SrcSpan into syntax type definitions as we used to, type families are used in their place so that the structure of the syntax including locations can be described without fixing concrete types for the locations where you’d once have had a source span type.

It works like this. In Language.Haskell.Syntax.Extension there is this definition:

type family XRec p a = r | r -> a

Locations are specified in terms of XRecs. For example in Language.Haskell.Syntax.Expr we have this:

type LHsExpr p = XRec p (HsExpr p)

How XRec p (HsExpr p) is mapped onto a specific type in GHC is achieved in the following way. First in Language.Haskell.Syntax.Extension there is the following definition:

type family Anno a = b

Then, in GHC.Hs.Extension this definition:

type instance XRec (GhcPass p) a = GenLocated (Anno a) a

Specific choices for each syntatic element can then be made for GHC’s use of the parse tree and phase. For example, in GHC.Hs.Expr we have the following.

type instance Anno (HsExpr (GhcPass pass)) = SrcSpanAnnA

To see how this works, consider what that means for the located expression type LHsExpr GhcPs in GHC. We have LHsExpr GhcPs is XRec GhcPs (HsExpr GhcPs) which is GenLocated (Anno (HsExpr GhcPs)) (HsExpr GhcPs) or GenLocated SrcSpanAnnA (HsExpr GhcPs) (or, LocatedA (HsExpr GhcPs)) if you like).

Expanding further we have GenLocated SrcSpanAnnA (HsExpr GhcPs) is GenLocated (SrcAnn AnnListItem) (HsExpr GhcPs). So ultimately, LHsExpr GhcPs is GenLocated (SrcSpanAnn' (EpAnn AnnListItem)) (HsExpr GhcPs).