Is it safe to derive MonadThrow, MonadCatch, MonadBaseControl, MonadUnliftIO, etc?

Question

I\'m refactoring some old code, which is in a polymorphic, but type-class constrained, monad:

class ( MonadIO m
      , MonadLogger m
      , MonadLoggerIO m
            


        

Answer 1

The user manual has documentation about every extension, and it keeps getting better; here's the section on deriving, that should be sufficient to know what's actually happening: https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow_exts.html#extensions-to-the-deriving-mechanism

In this case, all those classes are handled by GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving.

{-# LANGUAGE GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving, UndecidableInstances #-}

module M where

import Control.Monad.IO.Unlift
import Control.Monad.Catch
import Control.Monad.Trans.Control
import Control.Monad.Base
import Control.Monad.Reader

newtype Foo a = Foo (ReaderT () IO a)
  deriving (Functor, Applicative, Monad, MonadIO, MonadUnliftIO, MonadThrow, MonadCatch, MonadMask, MonadBase IO, MonadBaseControl IO)

In general, the three relevant extensions for user-defined classes are GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving, DerivingVia, and DeriveAnyType. And it's also worth enabling DerivingStrategies to make it explicit which is being used.