4.16. Running a compiled program
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## 4.16. Running a compiled program

To make an executable program, the GHC system compiles your code and then links it with a non-trivial runtime system (RTS), which handles storage management, thread scheduling, profiling, and so on.

The RTS has a lot of options to control its behaviour. For example, you can change the context-switch interval, the default size of the heap, and enable heap profiling. These options can be passed to the runtime system in a variety of different ways; the next section (Section 4.16.1, “Setting RTS options”) describes the various methods, and the following sections describe the RTS options themselves.

### 4.16.1. Setting RTS options

There are four ways to set RTS options:

- on the command line between `+RTS ... -RTS`, when running the program (Section 4.16.1.1, “Setting RTS options on the command line”)

- at compile-time, using `--with-rtsopts` (Section 4.16.1.2, “Setting RTS options at compile time”)

- with the environment variable `GHCRTS` (Section 4.16.1.3, “Setting RTS options with the `GHCRTS` environment variable”)

- by overriding “hooks” in the runtime system (Section 4.16.1.4, ““Hooks” to change RTS behaviour”)

#### 4.16.1.1. Setting RTS options on the command line

If you set the `-rtsopts` flag appropriately when linking (see Section 4.11.6, “Options affecting linking”), you can give RTS options on the command line when running your program.

When your Haskell program starts up, the RTS extracts command-line arguments bracketed between `+RTS` and `-RTS` as its own. For example:

    $ ghc prog.hs -rtsopts
    [1 of 1] Compiling Main             ( prog.hs, prog.o )
    Linking prog ...
    $ ./prog -f +RTS -H32m -S -RTS -h foo bar

The RTS will snaffle `-H32m` `-S` for itself, and the remaining arguments `-f -h foo bar` will be available to your program if/when it calls `System.Environment.getArgs`.

No `-RTS` option is required if the runtime-system options extend to the end of the command line, as in this example:

    % hls -ltr /usr/etc +RTS -A5m

If you absolutely positively want all the rest of the options in a command line to go to the program (and not the RTS), use a `––RTS`.

As always, for RTS options that take `size`s: If the last character of `size` is a K or k, multiply by 1000; if an M or m, by 1,000,000; if a G or G, by 1,000,000,000. (And any wraparound in the counters is your fault!)

Giving a `+RTS -?` option will print out the RTS options actually available in your program (which vary, depending on how you compiled).

NOTE: since GHC is itself compiled by GHC, you can change RTS options in the compiler using the normal `+RTS ... -RTS` combination. eg. to set the maximum heap size for a compilation to 128M, you would add `+RTS -M128m -RTS` to the command line.

#### 4.16.1.2. Setting RTS options at compile time

GHC lets you change the default RTS options for a program at compile time, using the `-with-rtsopts` flag (Section 4.11.6, “Options affecting linking”). For example, to set `-H128m -K64m`, link with `-with-rtsopts="-H128m -K64m"`.

#### 4.16.1.3. Setting RTS options with the `GHCRTS` environment variable

If the `-rtsopts` flag is set to something other than `none` when linking, RTS options are also taken from the environment variable `GHCRTS`. For example, to set the maximum heap size to 2G for all GHC-compiled programs (using an `sh`-like shell):

       GHCRTS='-M2G'
       export GHCRTS

RTS options taken from the `GHCRTS` environment variable can be overridden by options given on the command line.

Tip: setting something like `GHCRTS=-M2G` in your environment is a handy way to avoid Haskell programs growing beyond the real memory in your machine, which is easy to do by accident and can cause the machine to slow to a crawl until the OS decides to kill the process (and you hope it kills the right one).

#### 4.16.1.4. “Hooks” to change RTS behaviour

GHC lets you exercise rudimentary control over the RTS settings for any given program, by compiling in a “hook” that is called by the run-time system. The RTS contains stub definitions for all these hooks, but by writing your own version and linking it on the GHC command line, you can override the defaults.

Owing to the vagaries of DLL linking, these hooks don't work under Windows when the program is built dynamically.

The hook `ghc_rts_opts`lets you set RTS options permanently for a given program, in the same way as the newer `-with-rtsopts` linker option does. A common use for this is to give your program a default heap and/or stack size that is greater than the default. For example, to set `-H128m -K1m`, place the following definition in a C source file:

    char *ghc_rts_opts = "-H128m -K1m";

Compile the C file, and include the object file on the command line when you link your Haskell program.

These flags are interpreted first, before any RTS flags from the `GHCRTS` environment variable and any flags on the command line.

You can also change the messages printed when the runtime system “blows up,” e.g., on stack overflow. The hooks for these are as follows:

`void OutOfHeapHook (unsigned long, unsigned long)`

  The heap-overflow message.

`void StackOverflowHook (long int)`

  The stack-overflow message.

`void MallocFailHook (long int)`

  The message printed if `malloc` fails.

For examples of the use of these hooks, see GHC's own versions in the file `ghc/compiler/parser/hschooks.c` in a GHC source tree.

### 4.16.2. Miscellaneous RTS options

`-V`secs``

  Sets the interval that the RTS clock ticks at. The runtime uses a single timer signal to count ticks; this timer signal is used to control the context switch timer (Section 4.13, “Using Concurrent Haskell”) and the heap profiling timer Section 5.4.1, “RTS options for heap profiling”. Also, the time profiler uses the RTS timer signal directly to record time profiling samples.

  Normally, setting the `-V` option directly is not necessary: the resolution of the RTS timer is adjusted automatically if a short interval is requested with the `-C` or `-i` options. However, setting `-V` is required in order to increase the resolution of the time profiler.

  Using a value of zero disables the RTS clock completely, and has the effect of disabling timers that depend on it: the context switch timer and the heap profiling timer. Context switches will still happen, but deterministically and at a rate much faster than normal. Disabling the interval timer is useful for debugging, because it eliminates a source of non-determinism at runtime.

`--install-signal-handlers=`yes|no``

  If yes (the default), the RTS installs signal handlers to catch things like ctrl-C. This option is primarily useful for when you are using the Haskell code as a DLL, and want to set your own signal handlers.

  Note that even with `--install-signal-handlers=no`, the RTS interval timer signal is still enabled. The timer signal is either SIGVTALRM or SIGALRM, depending on the RTS configuration and OS capabilities. To disable the timer signal, use the `-V0` RTS option (see above).

`-xm`address``

  WARNING: this option is for working around memory allocation problems only. Do not use unless GHCi fails with a message like “`failed to mmap() memory below 2Gb`”. If you need to use this option to get GHCi working on your machine, please file a bug.

  On 64-bit machines, the RTS needs to allocate memory in the low 2Gb of the address space. Support for this across different operating systems is patchy, and sometimes fails. This option is there to give the RTS a hint about where it should be able to allocate memory in the low 2Gb of the address space. For example, `+RTS -xm20000000 -RTS` would hint that the RTS should allocate starting at the 0.5Gb mark. The default is to use the OS's built-in support for allocating memory in the low 2Gb if available (e.g. `mmap` with `MAP_32BIT` on Linux), or otherwise `-xm40000000`.

### 4.16.3. RTS options to control the garbage collector

There are several options to give you precise control over garbage collection. Hopefully, you won't need any of these in normal operation, but there are several things that can be tweaked for maximum performance.

`-A` `size`

  [Default: 512k] Set the allocation area size used by the garbage collector. The allocation area (actually generation 0 step 0) is fixed and is never resized (unless you use `-H`, below).

  Increasing the allocation area size may or may not give better performance (a bigger allocation area means worse cache behaviour but fewer garbage collections and less promotion).

  With only 1 generation (`-G1`) the `-A` option specifies the minimum allocation area, since the actual size of the allocation area will be resized according to the amount of data in the heap (see `-F`, below).

`-c`

  Use a compacting algorithm for collecting the oldest generation. By default, the oldest generation is collected using a copying algorithm; this option causes it to be compacted in-place instead. The compaction algorithm is slower than the copying algorithm, but the savings in memory use can be considerable.

  For a given heap size (using the `-H` option), compaction can in fact reduce the GC cost by allowing fewer GCs to be performed. This is more likely when the ratio of live data to heap size is high, say >30%.

  NOTE: compaction doesn't currently work when a single generation is requested using the `-G1` option.

`-c` `n`

  [Default: 30] Automatically enable compacting collection when the live data exceeds `n`% of the maximum heap size (see the `-M` option). Note that the maximum heap size is unlimited by default, so this option has no effect unless the maximum heap size is set with `-M` `size`.

`-F` `factor`

  [Default: 2] This option controls the amount of memory reserved for the older generations (and in the case of a two space collector the size of the allocation area) as a factor of the amount of live data. For example, if there was 2M of live data in the oldest generation when we last collected it, then by default we'll wait until it grows to 4M before collecting it again.

  The default seems to work well here. If you have plenty of memory, it is usually better to use `-H` `size` than to increase `-F` `factor`.

  The `-F` setting will be automatically reduced by the garbage collector when the maximum heap size (the `-M` `size` setting) is approaching.

`-G` `generations`

  [Default: 2] Set the number of generations used by the garbage collector. The default of 2 seems to be good, but the garbage collector can support any number of generations. Anything larger than about 4 is probably not a good idea unless your program runs for a long time, because the oldest generation will hardly ever get collected.

  Specifying 1 generation with `+RTS -G1` gives you a simple 2-space collector, as you would expect. In a 2-space collector, the `-A` option (see above) specifies the minimum allocation area size, since the allocation area will grow with the amount of live data in the heap. In a multi-generational collector the allocation area is a fixed size (unless you use the `-H` option, see below).

`-qg[`gen`]`

  [New in GHC 6.12.1] [Default: 0] Use parallel GC in generation `gen` and higher. Omitting `gen` turns off the parallel GC completely, reverting to sequential GC.

  The default parallel GC settings are usually suitable for parallel programs (i.e. those using `par`, Strategies, or with multiple threads). However, it is sometimes beneficial to enable the parallel GC for a single-threaded sequential program too, especially if the program has a large amount of heap data and GC is a significant fraction of runtime. To use the parallel GC in a sequential program, enable the parallel runtime with a suitable `-N` option, and additionally it might be beneficial to restrict parallel GC to the old generation with `-qg1`.

`-qb[`gen`]`

  [New in GHC 6.12.1] [Default: 1] Use load-balancing in the parallel GC in generation `gen` and higher. Omitting `gen` disables load-balancing entirely.

  Load-balancing shares out the work of GC between the available cores. This is a good idea when the heap is large and we need to parallelise the GC work, however it is also pessimal for the short young-generation collections in a parallel program, because it can harm locality by moving data from the cache of the CPU where is it being used to the cache of another CPU. Hence the default is to do load-balancing only in the old-generation. In fact, for a parallel program it is sometimes beneficial to disable load-balancing entirely with `-qb`.

`-H` `size`

  [Default: 0] This option provides a “suggested heap size” for the garbage collector. The garbage collector will use about this much memory until the program residency grows and the heap size needs to be expanded to retain reasonable performance.

  By default, the heap will start small, and grow and shrink as necessary. This can be bad for performance, so if you have plenty of memory it's worthwhile supplying a big `-H` `size`. For improving GC performance, using `-H` `size` is usually a better bet than `-A` `size`.

`-I` `seconds`

  (default: 0.3) In the threaded and SMP versions of the RTS (see `-threaded`, Section 4.11.6, “Options affecting linking”), a major GC is automatically performed if the runtime has been idle (no Haskell computation has been running) for a period of time. The amount of idle time which must pass before a GC is performed is set by the `-I` `seconds` option. Specifying `-I0` disables the idle GC.

  For an interactive application, it is probably a good idea to use the idle GC, because this will allow finalizers to run and deadlocked threads to be detected in the idle time when no Haskell computation is happening. Also, it will mean that a GC is less likely to happen when the application is busy, and so responsiveness may be improved. However, if the amount of live data in the heap is particularly large, then the idle GC can cause a significant delay, and too small an interval could adversely affect interactive responsiveness.

  This is an experimental feature, please let us know if it causes problems and/or could benefit from further tuning.

`-k` `size`

  [Default: 1k] Set the initial stack size for new threads. Thread stacks (including the main thread's stack) live on the heap, and grow as required. The default value is good for concurrent applications with lots of small threads; if your program doesn't fit this model then increasing this option may help performance.

  The main thread is normally started with a slightly larger heap to cut down on unnecessary stack growth while the program is starting up.

`-K` `size`

  [Default: 8M] Set the maximum stack size for an individual thread to `size` bytes. This option is there purely to stop the program eating up all the available memory in the machine if it gets into an infinite loop.

`-m` `n`

  Minimum % `n` of heap which must be available for allocation. The default is 3%.

`-M` `size`

  [Default: unlimited] Set the maximum heap size to `size` bytes. The heap normally grows and shrinks according to the memory requirements of the program. The only reason for having this option is to stop the heap growing without bound and filling up all the available swap space, which at the least will result in the program being summarily killed by the operating system.

  The maximum heap size also affects other garbage collection parameters: when the amount of live data in the heap exceeds a certain fraction of the maximum heap size, compacting collection will be automatically enabled for the oldest generation, and the `-F` parameter will be reduced in order to avoid exceeding the maximum heap size.

`-t`[`file`] , `-s`[`file`] , `-S`[`file`] , `--machine-readable`

  These options produce runtime-system statistics, such as the amount of time spent executing the program and in the garbage collector, the amount of memory allocated, the maximum size of the heap, and so on. The three variants give different levels of detail: `-t` produces a single line of output in the same format as GHC's `-Rghc-timing` option, `-s` produces a more detailed summary at the end of the program, and `-S` additionally produces information about each and every garbage collection.

  The output is placed in `file`. If `file` is omitted, then the output is sent to `stderr`.

  If you use the `-t` flag then, when your program finishes, you will see something like this:

      <<ghc: 36169392 bytes, 69 GCs, 603392/1065272 avg/max bytes residency (2 samples), 3M in use, 0.00 INIT (0.00 elapsed), 0.02 MUT (0.02 elapsed), 0.07 GC (0.07 elapsed) :ghc>>

  This tells you:

  - The total number of bytes allocated by the program over the whole run.

  - The total number of garbage collections performed.

  - The average and maximum "residency", which is the amount of live data in bytes. The runtime can only determine the amount of live data during a major GC, which is why the number of samples corresponds to the number of major GCs (and is usually relatively small). To get a better picture of the heap profile of your program, use the `-hT` RTS option (Section 4.16.5, “RTS options for profiling”).

  - The peak memory the RTS has allocated from the OS.

  - The amount of CPU time and elapsed wall clock time while initialising the runtime system (INIT), running the program itself (MUT, the mutator), and garbage collecting (GC).

  You can also get this in a more future-proof, machine readable format, with `-t --machine-readable`:

       [("bytes allocated", "36169392")
       ,("num_GCs", "69")
       ,("average_bytes_used", "603392")
       ,("max_bytes_used", "1065272")
       ,("num_byte_usage_samples", "2")
       ,("peak_megabytes_allocated", "3")
       ,("init_cpu_seconds", "0.00")
       ,("init_wall_seconds", "0.00")
       ,("mutator_cpu_seconds", "0.02")
       ,("mutator_wall_seconds", "0.02")
       ,("GC_cpu_seconds", "0.07")
       ,("GC_wall_seconds", "0.07")
       ]

  If you use the `-s` flag then, when your program finishes, you will see something like this (the exact details will vary depending on what sort of RTS you have, e.g. you will only see profiling data if your RTS is compiled for profiling):

            36,169,392 bytes allocated in the heap
             4,057,632 bytes copied during GC
             1,065,272 bytes maximum residency (2 sample(s))
                54,312 bytes maximum slop
                     3 MB total memory in use (0 MB lost due to fragmentation)

        Generation 0:    67 collections,     0 parallel,  0.04s,  0.03s elapsed
        Generation 1:     2 collections,     0 parallel,  0.03s,  0.04s elapsed

        SPARKS: 359207 (557 converted, 149591 pruned)

        INIT  time    0.00s  (  0.00s elapsed)
        MUT   time    0.01s  (  0.02s elapsed)
        GC    time    0.07s  (  0.07s elapsed)
        EXIT  time    0.00s  (  0.00s elapsed)
        Total time    0.08s  (  0.09s elapsed)

        %GC time      89.5%  (75.3% elapsed)

        Alloc rate    4,520,608,923 bytes per MUT second

        Productivity  10.5% of total user, 9.1% of total elapsed

  - The "bytes allocated in the heap" is the total bytes allocated by the program over the whole run.

  - GHC uses a copying garbage collector by default. "bytes copied during GC" tells you how many bytes it had to copy during garbage collection.

  - The maximum space actually used by your program is the "bytes maximum residency" figure. This is only checked during major garbage collections, so it is only an approximation; the number of samples tells you how many times it is checked.

  - The "bytes maximum slop" tells you the most space that is ever wasted due to the way GHC allocates memory in blocks. Slop is memory at the end of a block that was wasted. There's no way to control this; we just like to see how much memory is being lost this way.

  - The "total memory in use" tells you the peak memory the RTS has allocated from the OS.

  - Next there is information about the garbage collections done. For each generation it says how many garbage collections were done, how many of those collections were done in parallel, the total CPU time used for garbage collecting that generation, and the total wall clock time elapsed while garbage collecting that generation.

  - The `SPARKS` statistic refers to the use of `Control.Parallel.par` and related functionality in the program. Each spark represents a call to `par`; a spark is "converted" when it is executed in parallel; and a spark is "pruned" when it is found to be already evaluated and is discarded from the pool by the garbage collector. Any remaining sparks are discarded at the end of execution, so "converted" plus "pruned" does not necessarily add up to the total.

  - Next there is the CPU time and wall clock time elapsed broken down by what the runtime system was doing at the time. INIT is the runtime system initialisation. MUT is the mutator time, i.e. the time spent actually running your code. GC is the time spent doing garbage collection. RP is the time spent doing retainer profiling. PROF is the time spent doing other profiling. EXIT is the runtime system shutdown time. And finally, Total is, of course, the total.

    %GC time tells you what percentage GC is of Total. "Alloc rate" tells you the "bytes allocated in the heap" divided by the MUT CPU time. "Productivity" tells you what percentage of the Total CPU and wall clock elapsed times are spent in the mutator (MUT).

  The `-S` flag, as well as giving the same output as the `-s` flag, prints information about each GC as it happens:

          Alloc    Copied     Live    GC    GC     TOT     TOT  Page Flts
          bytes     bytes     bytes  user  elap    user    elap
         528496     47728    141512  0.01  0.02    0.02    0.02    0    0  (Gen:  1)
      [...]
         524944    175944   1726384  0.00  0.00    0.08    0.11    0    0  (Gen:  0)

  For each garbage collection, we print:

  - How many bytes we allocated this garbage collection.

  - How many bytes we copied this garbage collection.

  - How many bytes are currently live.

  - How long this garbage collection took (CPU time and elapsed wall clock time).

  - How long the program has been running (CPU time and elapsed wall clock time).

  - How many page faults occured this garbage collection.

  - How many page faults occured since the end of the last garbage collection.

  - Which generation is being garbage collected.

### 4.16.4. RTS options for concurrency and parallelism

The RTS options related to concurrency are described in Section 4.13, “Using Concurrent Haskell”, and those for parallelism in Section 4.14.2, “RTS options for SMP parallelism”.

### 4.16.5. RTS options for profiling

Most profiling runtime options are only available when you compile your program for profiling (see Section 5.2, “Compiler options for profiling”, and Section 5.4.1, “RTS options for heap profiling” for the runtime options). However, there is one profiling option that is available for ordinary non-profiled executables:

`-hT`

  Generates a basic heap profile, in the file ``prog`.hp`. To produce the heap profile graph, use hp2ps (see Section 5.5, “hp2ps––heap profile to PostScript”). The basic heap profile is broken down by data constructor, with other types of closures (functions, thunks, etc.) grouped into broad categories (e.g. `FUN`, `THUNK`). To get a more detailed profile, use the full profiling support (Chapter 5, Profiling).

### 4.16.6. Tracing

When the program is linked with the `-eventlog` option (Section 4.11.6, “Options affecting linking”), runtime events can be logged in two ways:

- In binary format to a file for later analysis by a variety of tools. One such tool is ThreadScope, which interprets the event log to produce a visual parallel execution profile of the program.

- As text to standard output, for debugging purposes.

`-l[`flags`]`

  Log events in binary format to the file ``program`.eventlog`, where `flags` is a sequence of zero or more characters indicating which kinds of events to log. Currently there is only one type supported: `-ls`, for scheduler events.

  The format of the log file is described by the header `EventLogFormat.h` that comes with GHC, and it can be parsed in Haskell using the ghc-events library. To dump the contents of a `.eventlog` file as text, use the tool `show-ghc-events` that comes with the ghc-events package.

`-v`[`flags`]

  Log events as text to standard output, instead of to the `.eventlog` file. The `flags` are the same as for `-l`, with the additional option `t` which indicates that the each event printed should be preceded by a timestamp value (in the binary `.eventlog` file, all events are automatically associated with a timestamp).

The debugging options `-D`x`` also generate events which are logged using the tracing framework. By default those events are dumped as text to stdout (`-D`x`` implies `-v`), but they may instead be stored in the binary eventlog file by using the `-l` option.

### 4.16.7. RTS options for hackers, debuggers, and over-interested souls

These RTS options might be used (a) to avoid a GHC bug, (b) to see “what's really happening”, or (c) because you feel like it. Not recommended for everyday use!

`-B`

  Sound the bell at the start of each (major) garbage collection.

  Oddly enough, people really do use this option! Our pal in Durham (England), Paul Callaghan, writes: “Some people here use it for a variety of purposes—honestly!—e.g., confirmation that the code/machine is doing something, infinite loop detection, gauging cost of recently added code. Certain people can even tell what stage [the program] is in by the beep pattern. But the major use is for annoying others in the same office…”

`-D` `x`

  An RTS debugging flag; only availble if the program was linked with the `-debug` option. Various values of `x` are provided to enable debug messages and additional runtime sanity checks in different subsystems in the RTS, for example `+RTS -Ds -RTS` enables debug messages from the scheduler. Use `+RTS -?` to find out which debug flags are supported.

  Debug messages will be sent to the binary event log file instead of stdout if the `-l` option is added. This might be useful for reducing the overhead of debug tracing.

`-r` `file`

  Produce “ticky-ticky” statistics at the end of the program run (only available if the program was linked with `-debug`). The `file` business works just like on the `-S` RTS option, above.

  For more information on ticky-ticky profiling, see Section 5.7, “Using “ticky-ticky” profiling (for implementors)”.

`-xc`

  (Only available when the program is compiled for profiling.) When an exception is raised in the program, this option causes the current cost-centre-stack to be dumped to `stderr`.

  This can be particularly useful for debugging: if your program is complaining about a `head []` error and you haven't got a clue which bit of code is causing it, compiling with `-prof -auto-all` and running with `+RTS -xc -RTS` will tell you exactly the call stack at the point the error was raised.

  The output contains one line for each exception raised in the program (the program might raise and catch several exceptions during its execution), where each line is of the form:

      < cc1, ..., ccn >

  each `cc`i is a cost centre in the program (see Section 5.1, “Cost centres and cost-centre stacks”), and the sequence represents the “call stack” at the point the exception was raised. The leftmost item is the innermost function in the call stack, and the rightmost item is the outermost function.

`-Z`

  Turn off “update-frame squeezing” at garbage-collection time. (There's no particularly good reason to turn it off, except to ensure the accuracy of certain data collected regarding thunk entry counts.)

### 4.16.8. Getting information about the RTS

It is possible to ask the RTS to give some information about itself. To do this, use the `--info` flag, e.g.

    $ ./a.out +RTS --info
     [("GHC RTS", "YES")
     ,("GHC version", "6.7")
     ,("RTS way", "rts_p")
     ,("Host platform", "x86_64-unknown-linux")
     ,("Host architecture", "x86_64")
     ,("Host OS", "linux")
     ,("Host vendor", "unknown")
     ,("Build platform", "x86_64-unknown-linux")
     ,("Build architecture", "x86_64")
     ,("Build OS", "linux")
     ,("Build vendor", "unknown")
     ,("Target platform", "x86_64-unknown-linux")
     ,("Target architecture", "x86_64")
     ,("Target OS", "linux")
     ,("Target vendor", "unknown")
     ,("Word size", "64")
     ,("Compiler unregisterised", "NO")
     ,("Tables next to code", "YES")
     ]

The information is formatted such that it can be read as a of type `[(String, String)]`. Currently the following fields are present:

`GHC RTS`

  Is this program linked against the GHC RTS? (always "YES").

`GHC version`

  The version of GHC used to compile this program.

`RTS way`

  The variant (“way”) of the runtime. The most common values are `rts` (vanilla), `rts_thr` (threaded runtime, i.e. linked using the `-threaded` option) and `rts_p` (profiling runtime, i.e. linked using the `-prof` option). Other variants include `debug` (linked using `-debug`), `t` (ticky-ticky profiling) and `dyn` (the RTS is linked in dynamically, i.e. a shared library, rather than statically linked into the executable itself). These can be combined, e.g. you might have `rts_thr_debug_p`.

`Target platform`, `Target architecture`, `Target OS`, `Target vendor`

  These are the platform the program is compiled to run on.

`Build platform`, `Build architecture`, `Build OS`, `Build vendor`

  These are the platform where the program was built on. (That is, the target platform of GHC itself.) Ordinarily this is identical to the target platform. (It could potentially be different if cross-compiling.)

`Host platform`, `Host architecture` `Host OS` `Host vendor`

  These are the platform where GHC itself was compiled. Again, this would normally be identical to the build and target platforms.

`Word size`

  Either `"32"` or `"64"`, reflecting the word size of the target platform.

`Compiler unregistered`

  Was this program compiled with an “unregistered” version of GHC? (I.e., a version of GHC that has no platform-specific optimisations compiled in, usually because this is a currently unsupported platform.) This value will usually be no, unless you're using an experimental build of GHC.

`Tables next to code`

  Putting info tables directly next to entry code is a useful performance optimisation that is not available on all platforms. This field tells you whether the program has been compiled with this optimisation. (Usually yes, except on unusual platforms.)

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4.15. Platform-specific Flags | Home | 4.17. Generating and compiling External Core Files