1 The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 2.02
2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4 We are pleased to announce the first release of the Glasgow Haskell
5 Compiler (GHC, version 2.02) for *Haskell 1.4*. Sources and binaries
6 are freely available by anonymous FTP and on the World-Wide Web;
9 Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language; the
10 current language version is 1.4, agreed in March, 1997. The Haskell
13 http://haskell.org/report/
15 GHC 2.02 is a beta-quality release:
18 It has been extensively tested against a large suite of Haskell 1.2
19 programs, but not so extensively tested against Haskell 1.4 programs
20 because we don't have a comprehensive set (Donations of Haskell 1.4
21 programs to our test suite are most welcome).
23 * It should generate reasonably good code.
24 All the optimisations that GHC 0.29 used to do are back in, with
25 the exception of specialisation. It ought to be the case that
26 GHC 2.02 outperforms GHC 0.29, because it has a much better
27 handle on cross-module inlining, but we know for certain that
28 this isn't always the case. We have yet to make a systematic
29 comparison. In short, this is not the moment to switch from 0.29
30 if you Really Care about performance. 2.02 does, however,
31 generate much better code than 2.01.
33 (Please send us programs where 2.02 does noticeably worse than 0.29.)
35 * It is more expensive than it should be.
36 GHC 2.02 has received even less attention to its own performance.
37 At present it eats more space and time than GHC 0.29, especially
38 for very small programs. We'll work on this.
40 * A couple of Haskell 1.4 features are incompletely supported,
41 notably polymorphic strictness annotations, and Unicode.
43 If you want to use Haskell 1.4, this is a good moment to switch. If
44 you don't need the Haskell 1.4 extensions, then stay with GHC 0.29.
45 If you want to hack on GHC itself, then 2.02 is definitely for you.
46 The release notes comment further on this point.
48 GHC 2.02 is substantially changed from 2.01. Changes worth noting
51 * The whole front end, which deals with the module system, has
52 been rewritten. The interface file format has changed.
54 * GHC 2.02 is released together with Green Card, a C foreign language
55 interface for GHC. Green card is a pre-processor that
56 scans Haskell source files for Green Card directives, which
57 it expands into tons of "ccall" boilerplate that marshalls
58 your arguments to and from C.
60 * GHC 2.02 is available for Win32 platforms, which, from now on,
61 is a fully supported platform for GHC.
63 * GHC 2.02 supports full cross module inlining. Unlike 0.29 and
64 its predecessors, inlining can happen even if the inlined body
65 mentions a function or type that is not itself exported. This is
66 one place Haskell 1.4's new module system really pays off.
68 * Like 2.01, GHC 2.02 aborts a compilation if it decides that
69 nothing that the module imports *and acually uses* has changed.
70 This decision is now taken by the compiler itself, rather than
71 by a Perl script (as in 2.01) which sometimes got it wrong.
73 * The ghc/lib libraries are much more systematically organised.
75 * There's a completely new "make" system. This will mainly affect people
76 who want the source distribution, who will hopefully find it much, much,
77 easier than grappling with the old Jmakefiles. Even for binary
78 installation, the procedure is a little simpler, though.
80 Please see the release notes for a complete discussion of What's New.
82 To run this release, you need a machine with 16+MB memory (more if
83 building from sources), GNU C (`gcc'), and `perl'. We have seen GHC
84 2.01 work on these platforms: alpha-dec-osf2, hppa1.1-hp-hpux9,
85 sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}, mips-sgi-irix5, and
86 i386-unknown-{linux,solaris2,freebsd,cygwin32}. Similar platforms
87 should work with minimal hacking effort. The installer's guide
88 give a full what-ports-work report.
90 Binaries are distributed in `bundles', e.g. a "profiling bundle" or a
91 "concurrency bundle" for your platform. Just grab the ones you need.
93 Once you have the distribution, please follow the pointers in
94 ghc/README to find all of the documentation about this release. NB:
95 preserve modification times when un-tarring the files (no `m' option
98 We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, send
99 mail to majordomo@dcs.gla.ac.uk; the msg body should be:
101 subscribe glasgow-haskell-<which> Your Name <your-email@where.you.are>
103 Please send bug reports about GHC to glasgow-haskell-bugs@dcs.gla.ac.uk.
109 Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
111 GHC home page http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/
112 Glasgow FP group page http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/
113 comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/faq.html
115 ======================================================================
118 The easy way is to go to the WWW GHC distribution page, which is
121 ftp://ftp.dcs.gla.ac.uk/pub/haskell/glasgow/README.html
123 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
124 Otherwise you can use the old anonymous FTP method from the main Haskell
125 archive sites, in the directory pub/haskell/glasgow:
127 ftp.dcs.gla.ac.uk (130.209.240.50)
128 ftp.cs.chalmers.se (129.16.227.140)
129 haskell.cs.yale.edu (128.36.11.43)
131 [BUT: the latter two sites may take a while to get up to date.]
133 The Glasgow site is mirrored by src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.43.1), in
134 computing/programming/languages/haskell/glasgow.
136 These are the available files (.gz files are gzipped) -- some are `on
137 demand', ask if you don't see them:
139 ghc-2.02-src.tar.gz The source distribution; about 3MB.
141 ghc-2.02.ANNOUNCE This file.
143 ghc-2.02.{README,RELEASE-NOTES} From the distribution; for those who
144 want to peek before FTPing...
146 ghc-2.02-ps-docs.tar.gz Main GHC documents in PostScript format; in
147 case your TeX setup doesn't agree with our
150 ghc-2.02-<platform>.tar.gz Basic binary distribution for a particular
151 <platform>. Unpack and go: you can compile
152 and run Haskell programs with nothing but one
153 of these files. NB: does *not* include
154 profiling (see below).
156 <platform> ==> alpha-dec-osf2
160 i386-unknown-solaris2
161 i386-unknown-cygwin32
167 ghc-2.02-<bundle>-<platform>.tar.gz
169 <platform> ==> as above
170 <bundle> ==> prof (profiling)
171 conc (concurrent Haskell)
173 gran (GranSim parallel simulator)
174 ticky (`ticky-ticky' counts -- for implementors)
175 prof-conc (profiling for "conc[urrent]")
176 prof-ticky (ticky for "conc[urrent]")
178 ghc-2.02-hc-files.tar.gz Basic set of intermediate C (.hc) files for the
179 compiler proper, the prelude, and `Hello,
180 world'. Used for bootstrapping the system.