1 The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 2.01
2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4 We are proud to announce the first public release of the Glasgow
5 Haskell Compiler (GHC) for the revised Haskell 1.3 language. Sources
6 and binaries are freely available by anonymous FTP and on the
7 World-Wide Web; details below.
9 GHC 2.01 is a test-quality release, worth trying if you are a gung-ho
10 Haskell user or if you want to ensure that we quickly fix bugs that
11 affect your programs :-) We advise *AGAINST* deleting your copy of
12 that old workhorse GHC 0.26 (for Haskell 1.2), and *AGAINST* relying
13 on this compiler (2.01) in any way. With your help in testing 2.01,
14 we hope to release a more solid Haskell 1.3 compiler relatively soon.
16 Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language [see
17 SIGPLAN Notices, May 1992]. The current language version is 1.3,
20 The Glasgow Haskell project seeks to bring the power and elegance of
21 functional programming to bear on real-world problems. To that end,
22 GHC lets you call C (including cross-system garbage collection),
23 provides good profiling tools, supports ever richer I/O, and
24 concurrency and parallelism. Our goal is to make it the "tool of
25 choice for real-world applications".
27 GHC 2.01 is quite different from 0.26 (July 1995), as the new version
28 number suggests. (The 1.xx numbers are reserved for any Haskell-1.2
29 compiler releases.) Changes worth noting include:
33 * Concurrent Haskell: with this, you can build programs out of many
34 I/O-performing, interacting `threads'. We have a draft paper
35 about Concurrent Haskell, and our forthcoming Haggis GUI toolkit
38 * Parallel Haskell, running on top of PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine)
39 and hence portable to pretty much any parallel architecture,
40 whether shared memory or distributed memory. With this, your
41 Haskell program runs on multiple processors, guided by `par` and
42 `seq` annotations. The first pretty-much-everyone-can-try-it
43 parallel functional programming system! NB: The parallel stuff is
44 "research-tool quality"... consider this an alpha release.
46 * "Foldr/build" deforestation (by Andy Gill) is in, as are
47 "SPECIALIZE instance" pragmas (by Patrick Sansom).
49 * The LibPosix library provides an even richer I/O interface than
50 the standard 1.3 I/O library. A program like a shell or an FTP
51 client can be written in Haskell -- examples included.
53 * Yet more cool libraries: Readline (GNU command-line editing),
54 Socket (BSD sockets), Regex and MatchPS (GNU regular expressions).
55 By Darren Moffat and Sigbjorn Finne.
57 * New ports -- Linux (a.out) and MIPS (Silicon Graphics).
59 * NB: configuration has changed yet again -- for the better, of
62 Please see the release notes for a complete discussion of What's New.
64 To run this release, you need a machine with 16+MB memory, GNU C
65 (`gcc'), and `perl'. We have seen GHC 0.26 work on these platforms:
66 alpha-dec-osf2, hppa1.1-hp-hpux9, i386-unknown-linuxaout,
67 m68k-sun-sunos4, mips-sgi-irix5, and sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}.
68 Similar platforms should work with minimal hacking effort.
69 The installer's guide give a full what-ports-work report.
71 Binaries are now distributed in `bundles', e.g. a "profiling bundle"
72 or a "concurrency bundle" for your platform. Just grab the ones you
75 Once you have the distribution, please follow the pointers in
76 ghc/README to find all of the documentation about this release. NB:
77 preserve modification times when un-tarring the files (no `m' option
80 We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, send
81 mail to glasgow-haskell-{users,bugs}-request@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk.
82 Please send bug reports to glasgow-haskell-bugs.
84 Particular thanks to: Jim Mattson (author of much of the code) who has
85 now moved to HP in California; and the Turing Institute who donated a
86 lot of SGI cycles for the SGI port.
88 Simon Peyton Jones and Will Partain
92 Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
94 GHC home page http://www.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc.html
95 Glasgow FP group page http://www.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk/fp/
96 comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/faq.html
98 ======================================================================
101 This release is available by anonymous FTP from the main Haskell
102 archive sites, in the directory pub/haskell/glasgow:
104 ftp.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (130.209.240.50)
105 ftp.cs.chalmers.se (129.16.227.140)
106 haskell.cs.yale.edu (128.36.11.43)
108 The Glasgow site is mirrored by src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.43.1), in
109 computing/programming/languages/haskell/glasgow.
111 These are the available files (.gz files are gzipped) -- some are `on
112 demand', ask if you don't see them:
114 ghc-0.26-src.tar.gz The source distribution; about 3MB.
116 ghc-0.26.ANNOUNCE This file.
118 ghc-0.26.{README,RELEASE-NOTES} From the distribution; for those who
119 want to peek before FTPing...
121 ghc-0.26-ps-docs.tar.gz Main GHC documents in PostScript format; in
122 case your TeX setup doesn't agree with our
125 ghc-0.26-<platform>.tar.gz Basic binary distribution for a particular
126 <platform>. Unpack and go: you can compile
127 and run Haskell programs with nothing but one
128 of these files. NB: does *not* include
129 profiling (see below).
131 <platform> ==> alpha-dec-osf2
133 i386-unknown-linuxaout
134 i386-unknown-solaris2
140 ghc-0.26-<bundle>-<platform>.tar.gz
142 <platform> ==> as above
143 <bundle> ==> prof (profiling)
144 conc (concurrent Haskell)
146 gran (GranSim parallel simulator)
147 ticky (`ticky-ticky' counts -- for implementors)
148 prof-conc (profiling for "conc[urrent]")
149 prof-ticky (ticky for "conc[urrent]")
151 ghc-0.26-hc-files.tar.gz Basic set of intermediate C (.hc) files for the
152 compiler proper, the prelude, and `Hello,
153 world'. Used for bootstrapping the system.
156 ghc-0.26-<bundle>-hc-files.tar.gz Further sets of .hc files, for
157 building other "bundles", e.g., profiling.
159 ghc-0.26-hi-files-<blah>.tar.gz Sometimes it's more convenient to
160 use a different set of interface files than
161 the ones in *-src.tar.gz. (The installation
162 guide will advise you of this.)
164 We could provide diffs from previous versions of GHC, should you
165 require them. A full set would be very large (7MB).