Importing a known function from an already-compiled binary, using GHC's API or Hint

Question

I have a module Target, with a function Target.accessMe inside it. I compile this module in some way, then get rid of the source code.

Now,

Answer 1

The answer to this question has been given to me elsewhere. The GHC API is capable of doing this. Here are two functions, one of which compiles Target.hs, while the other accesses Target.accessMe (and doesn't require the source code of the Target module to be there anymore).

import GHC
import DynFlags

compile :: String -> IO SuccessFlag
compile name = defaultRunGhc $ do
  dynflags <- getSessionDynFlags
  let dynflags' = dynflags -- You can change various options here.
  setSessionDynFlags dynflags'

  -- (name) can be "Target.hs", "Target", etc.
  target <- guessTarget name Nothing
  addTarget target
  load LoadAllTargets -- Runs something like "ghc --make".

That's a function that compiles a given module and returns whether compilation succeeded or not. It uses a defaultRunGhc helper function that is defined as:

import GHC.Paths (libdir)

defaultRunGhc :: Ghc a -> IO a
defaultRunGhc = defaultErrorHandler defaultDynFlags . runGhc (Just libdir)

And now a function for fetching a value from the compiled module. The module's source code need not be present at this point.

import Unsafe.Coerce (unsafeCoerce)

fetch :: String -> String -> IO Int -- Assumes we are fetching an Int value.
fetch name value = defaultRunGhc $ do
  -- Again, you can change various options in dynflags here, as above.
  dynflags <- getSessionDynFlags
  let m = mkModule (thisPackage dynflags) (mkModuleName name)
  setContext [] [(m, Nothing)] -- Use setContext [] [m] for GHC<7.

  fetched <- compileExpr (name ++ "." ++ value) -- Fetching "Target.accessMe".
  return (unsafeCoerce fetched :: Int)

And that's it!

Answer 2

The plugins package is problematic anyway. You might want to look at Hint instead.