1 The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 4.06
2 ==============================================
4 We are pleased to announce a new release of the Glasgow Haskell
5 Compiler (GHC), version 4.06. The source distribution is freely
6 available via the World-Wide Web and through anon. FTP; details below.
8 Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language; the
9 current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998.
10 Haskell related information is available from the Haskell home page at
12 http://www.haskell.org/
14 GHC's Web page lives at
16 http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
21 This should be a stable release. We have not made major changes
22 since 4.04 to the core compiler, but we have fixed lots of bugs.
23 We believe that 4.06 is in a nice stable well-tested state. (Ha!)
25 Apart from that, there are the following changes
27 - Major library reorganisation. All libraries, except the ones that
28 are part of the Haskell 98 *language* specification, have moved to
29 fptools/hslibs/. The hslibs tree is independent of GHC, shared between
30 GHC, Hugs, and (we hope) other Haskell implementations.
31 The idea is to make it easier for people to contribute and maintain
34 The hslibs/ tree is organised in a Java-like fashion. Details in
35 the new Library guide:
36 http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/hslibs/book1.html
38 Existing programs that use the -syslib flag may need to change which
41 - Support for "foreign export dynamic".
43 - Clean up of concurrent I/O system; in particular, I/O is now non-blocking,
44 except (alas) on stdout/stderr for tiresome reasons.
46 - Some refinements to the exceptions mechanism:
47 http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/users_guide/release-4-06.html#exc-changes-406
49 - More performance tuning: compiled programs now allocate 10% less memory
52 For full details see the release notes:
54 http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/users_guide/release-4-06.html
59 We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, send
60 mail to majordomo@haskell.org; the msg body should be:
62 subscribe glasgow-haskell-<which> Your Name <your-email@where.you.are>
64 Please send bug reports about GHC to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org ; GHC
65 users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org
68 + On-line GHC-related resources
69 ================================
71 Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
73 GHC home page http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
74 Haskell home page http://www.haskell.org/
75 comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/faq.html
81 The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be
84 http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
86 Once you have the distribution, please follow the pointers in the
87 README file to find all of the documentation about this release. NB:
88 preserve modification times when un-tarring the files (no `m' option
93 ======================
95 To compile up this source-only release, you need a machine with 32+MB
96 memory, GNU C (`gcc'), `perl' plus a version of GHC installed (3.02 at
97 least). This release is known to work on the following platforms:
99 * i386-unknown-{linux,solaris2,freebsd,netbsd,cygwin32}
100 * sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}
101 * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
103 Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy, but
104 haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware:
108 * {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix
110 The builder's guide included in distribution gives a complete
111 run-down of what-ports-work; an on-line version can be found at
113 http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/building_guide/installing.html