Partial evaluator should not silently swallow errors
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- Dominant language
- OCaml
- Stars
- 160
- Forks
- 59
- Avg merge
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Description
If the partial evaluator replaces one function call with another, it checks that the new function is well-typed for it's arguments. This only seems to be there as a sanity check/safeguard against bad implementation of partial evaluation. This safeguard doesn't even check the return type is correct, just that the function is callable.
Non-function evaluations (such as when the result is evaluated all the way down to a literal value) are not checked at all.
If we'd like to keep this kind of check, it would be more useful throw an exception instead of silently suppressing the invalid partial evaluation.
Originally discussed with @nhuurre in https://github.com/stan-dev/stanc3/pull/1115#discussion_r810026326
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
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Research direction
Start by locating the partial evaluator implementation and its existing validation paths. Trace both function-call replacements and non-function results such as literals; done when invalid partial evaluations are no longer silently suppressed and the behavior is covered by a regression test.
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Assessment
- Tech stack
- ocaml
- Domain
- compilers
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 42/100