[Haddock] Documentation for data family instances

C Rodrigues red5_2 at hotmail.com
Mon Oct 18 22:11:26 EDT 2010


Replying to David Waern:




On closer inspection, it's probably not a bug.  It's just impossible to explicitly export a datafamily's data constructor without also exporting the data family.  Haddock dutifully displays theunwanted type family declaration, even though I only wanted to export a data constructor.




Here's an example of what I would like in Haddock output.  In short, I would like to see datafamilies documented like type classes, and data family instances documented like data/newtypeconstructors.




> data family T :: * -> *
>  This description fits the data type to a T.  Since this is a family-friendly mailing list, the>  details of T Bag are not exported and you can only see that an instance exists.
>  Instances
>    T Time
>    T Shirt>    T Bag
>
> data instance T Shirt
>  Constructors
>    Generous Size
>    Fitted Size
>
> buy :: IO (T Shirt)
>
> newtype instance T Time
>  Constructors
>    TTime Time
>
> brew :: T Time -> IO ()




To me, data instances are a lot like regular data types: you'd like to put them in a specific placein the documentation.  This makes them behave quite differently from class instances, whichdon't have first-class status in Haddock but can only be attached to other entities.  Yourquestions made me realize that my patch doesn't do what I want when there's a module exportlist.




Given that, I think data instances should be ExportItems.  You mentioned putting them inexpItemInstances, but wouldn't that force data instances to appear together with the data family?


 		 	   		  


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