--- Hugs update ---
Over the past few months, there have been a number of changes in the
Hugs world; the purpose of this message is to update you with details
of what is happening, and of our plans for the future.
The upcoming Hugs 98 release:
-----------------------------
As many of you know, we are now in the final stages of preparing the
final Hugs 98 release. Thanks to everyone who has experimented with
the series of beta releases over the past few months --- and if you
have any more bugs to report, then please do so as soon as possible!
This release brings together in one single package all of the features
of previous Hugs releases. It is the culmination of my efforts, as
well as those of the Yale Haskell group, and particularly Alastair
Reid. It represents the last of the Nottingham and Yale releases of
Hugs as I have now moved to OGI, and Alastair has moved to work on a
different project in Utah.
We hope that this release will prove a stable and reliable platform
for work with Haskell 98, and we expect it to be available for a long
time to come.
A new home for Hugs:
--------------------
Future work on Hugs will be based here in PacSoft at OGI, where it
plays a major role in much of our research. As part of PacSoft's
commitment to Hugs, we have have appointed Andy Gill as a Principal
Project Scientist to develop and maintain Hugs. He will be working
with Tim Sheard, with me, and with other members of PacSoft. Andy
worked extensively on the Glasgow Haskell compiler during his PhD in
Glasgow, and has spent the past few years on compiler related
projects in industry. To catch up with what Andy has been doing,
check out his web page at http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~andy.
The team at OGI will continue to work closely with other groups,
including Simon Peyton Jones and his group in Cambridge/Glasgow;
Paul Hudak and John Peterson at Yale; and Erik Meijer and Daan
Leijen in Utrecht.
Hugs/GHC integration:
---------------------
An important ongoing goal is to narrow the gap between Hugs and
GHC, so that, as much as possible, they support the same language
features, the same syntax and semantics, and the same libraries and
tools. We are also working towards a system that will allow
programmers to mix compiled and interpreted code from within the
interpreter. The first part of this project is to build a next
generation version of Hugs, currently referred to as "STG Hugs",
which runs as a stand-alone system, but uses the same underlying
run-time system as GHC. To achieve this goal, Simon Marlow (at
Glasgow and now Microsoft Research) has written a completely new
run-time system for GHC. Thanks to the work of Alastair and more
recently, of Julian Seward, the current STG Hugs prototype, an
upward-compatible and extended version of Hugs 98, is already
running a wide range of benchmarks.
We will also continue to support the use of Hugs as a stand-alone
system that can be used completely independently of GHC, and
without being limited to platforms on which GHC is supported.
Cross Platform support:
-----------------------
We remain committed to making Hugs available on as wide a range
of platforms as we can; our goal is to make high-quality, robust
functional programming tools available to as large an audience as
possible. Of course, we will always be grateful for contributions
and assistance that help us to meet these goals.
Contact addresses:
------------------
We very much welcome feedback and suggestions from the Hugs, GHC,
and Haskell communities. General messages about Hugs should be
sent to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bug reports
should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Further information
about Hugs, including details on how to subscribe to each of
these mailing lists, can be found from the Hugs home page at:
http://haskell.org/hugs
The home page for PacSoft is at:
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/PacSoft/
----
All the best,
Mark
