The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 4.06
==
We are pleased to announce a new release of the Glasgow Haskell
Compiler (GHC), version 4.06. The source distribution is freely
available via the World-Wide Web and through anon. FTP; details below.
Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language; the
current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998.
Haskell related information is available from the Haskell home page at
http://www.haskell.org/
GHC's Web page lives at
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
+ What's new
=
This should be a stable release. We have not made major changes
since 4.04 to the core compiler, but we have fixed lots of bugs.
We believe that 4.06 is in a nice stable well-tested state. (Ha!)
Apart from that, there are the following changes
- Major library reorganisation. All libraries, except the ones that
are part of the Haskell 98 *language* specification, have moved to
fptools/hslibs/. The hslibs tree is independent of GHC, shared between
GHC, Hugs, and (we hope) other Haskell implementations.
The idea is to make it easier for people to contribute and maintain
libraries.
The hslibs/ tree is organised in a Java-like fashion. Details in
the new Library guide:
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/hslibs/book1.html
Existing programs that use the -syslib flag may need to change which
syslibs they include.
- Support for "foreign export dynamic".
- Clean up of concurrent I/O system; in particular, I/O is now non-blocking,
except (alas) on stdout/stderr for tiresome reasons.
- Some refinements to the exceptions mechanism:
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/users_guide/release-4-06.html#exc-changes-406
- More performance tuning: compiled programs now allocate 10% less memory
than 4.04
For full details see the release notes:
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/users_guide/release-4-06.html
+ Mailing lists
We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, send
mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]; the msg body should be:
subscribe glasgow-haskell-which Your Name [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please send bug reports about GHC to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; GHC
users hang out on [EMAIL PROTECTED]
+ On-line GHC-related resources
Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
GHC home page http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
Haskell home page http://www.haskell.org/
comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/faq.html
+ How to get it
The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be
self-explanatory:
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
Once you have the distribution, please follow the pointers in the
README file to find all of the documentation about this release. NB:
preserve modification times when un-tarring the files (no `m' option
for tar, please)!
+ System requirements
==
To compile up this source-only release, you need a machine with 32+MB
memory, GNU C (`gcc'), `perl' plus a version of GHC installed (3.02 at
least). This release is known to work on the following platforms:
* i386-unknown-{linux,solaris2,freebsd,netbsd,cygwin32}
* sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}
* hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy, but
haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware:
* alpha-dec-osf{2,3}
* mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
* {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix
The builder's guide included in distribution gives a complete
run-down of what-ports-work; an on-line version can be found at
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/building_guide/installing.html
