1 The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 2.04
2 ==============================================
4 We are pleased to announce a new release of the Glasgow Haskell
5 Compiler (GHC), version 2.04. Source distribution is freely available
6 via the World-Wide Web and anon. FTP; details below.
8 Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language; the
9 current language version is 1.4, agreed in April, 1997. Haskell
10 related information is available from the Haskell home page at:
18 Release 2.04 represent work done through May '97; highlights include:
20 * Data constructors can now have polymophic fields, and ordinary
21 functions can have polymoprhic arguments. Details on
23 http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~simonpj/quantification.html
25 Existential types coming, but not done yet.
27 * Pattern guards implemented, see
29 http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~simonpj/guards.html
31 * Compiler can now compile itself (i.e., no real dependence on
32 the Haskell 1.2 compiler anymore (version 0.29)).
35 Compilation speeds has improved since 2.02, although it still slower
36 than GHC-0.29, the Good Old Compiler. (the gap is narrowing, though!)
38 * Code quality is better, the simplifier and inlining machinery has been
39 refurbished. Not sure how much better.
41 * powerpc-ibm-aix is now a supported GHC platform, due to the
42 Heroic Efforts of Andr\'e Santos <alms@di.ufpe.br>.
44 * It has been tested against a large suite of (mostly) Haskell 1.2
45 programs (the NoFib suite). Bunch of bugs related to new
46 Haskell 1.4 has been weeded out.
48 * A couple of Haskell 1.4 features are still incompletely supported,
49 notably polymorphic strictness annotations, and Unicode.
51 Please see the release notes for a complete discussion of What's New.
57 We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, send
58 mail to majordomo@dcs.gla.ac.uk; the msg body should be:
60 subscribe glasgow-haskell-<which> Your Name <your-email@where.you.are>
62 Please send bug reports about GHC to glasgow-haskell-bugs@dcs.gla.ac.uk ; GHC
63 users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@dcs.gla.ac.uk
66 + On-line GHC-related resources
67 ================================
69 Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
71 GHC home page http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/
72 Haskell home page http://haskell.org/
73 Glasgow FP group page http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/
74 comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/faq.html
80 The easy way is to go to the WWW GHC distribution page, which should
83 ftp://ftp.dcs.gla.ac.uk/pub/haskell/glasgow/README.html
85 Once you have the distribution, please follow the pointers in the
86 README file to find all of the documentation about this release. NB:
87 preserve modification times when un-tarring the files (no `m' option
92 ======================
94 To compile up this source-only release, you need a machine with 16+MB
95 memory, GNU C (`gcc'), `perl' plus a version of GHC installed (either
96 version 0.29 or 2.02/2.03). We have seen GHC work on these platforms:
99 * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
100 * sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}
102 * i386-unknown-{linux,solaris2,freebsd,cygwin32}.
105 Similar platforms should work with minimal hacking effort. The installer's
106 guide included in distribution gives a complete run-down of what-ports-work.