- 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.
+ ============================================================
+ The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 5.04
+ ============================================================
-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/
+We are pleased to announce a new major release of the Glasgow Haskell
+Compiler (GHC), version 5.04.
-GHC's Web page lives at
+Highlights include:
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
+ * Hierarchical libraries, with documentation produced by Haddock.
-+ What's new
-=============
+ * New type system extensions: full rank-N types and kind
+ annotations.
+
+ * New heap profiling facilities (retainer profiling, biographical
+ profiling).
-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!)
+ * MacOS X support
-Apart from that, there are the following changes
+See the release notes for a full list of the 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.
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/release-5-04.html
- 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.
+How to get it
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be self-explanatory:
- - Support for "foreign export dynamic".
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
- - Clean up of concurrent I/O system; in particular, I/O is now non-blocking,
- except (alas) on stdout/stderr for tiresome reasons.
+We supply binary builds in the native package format for various
+flavours of Linux and BSD, and in Windows Installer (MSI) form
+for Windows folks. Binary builds for other platforms are available
+as a .tar.gz which can be installed wherever you want. The source
+distribution is also available from the same place.
- - Some refinements to the exceptions mechanism:
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/users_guide/release-notes-406.html#exc-changes-406
+Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your
+system isn't available yet, please try again later.
- - More performance tuning: compiled programs now allocate 10% less memory
- than 4.04
+Background
+~~~~~~~~~~
+Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the
+current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998.
-For full details see the release notes:
+GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell. Included is
+an optimising compiler generating good code for a variety of
+platforms, together with an interactive system for convenient, quick
+development. The distribution includes space and time profiling
+facilities, a large collection of libraries, and support for various
+language extensions, including concurrency, exceptions, and foreign
+language interfaces (C, whatever). GHC is distributed under a
+BSD-style open source license.
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/users_guide/release-notes-406.html
+A wide variety of Haskell related resources (tutorials, libraries,
+specifications, documentation, compilers, interpreters, references,
+contact information, links to research groups) are available from the
+Haskell home page (see below).
-+ Mailing lists
-================
-We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, send
-mail to majordomo@haskell.org; the msg body should be:
+On-line GHC-related resources
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- subscribe glasgow-haskell-<which> Your Name <your-email@where.you.are>
+Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
-Please send bug reports about GHC to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org ; GHC
-users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org
+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/~gmh/faq.html
-+ On-line GHC-related resources
-================================
-Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
+System requirements
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+To compile programs with GHC, you need a machine with 64+MB memory, GCC
+and perl. This release is known to work on the following platforms:
-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
+ * i386-unknown-{linux,*bsd,mingw32}
+ * sparc-sun-solaris2
+ * alpha-dec-osf3
+ * powerpc-apple-darwin (MacOS/X)
+Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy (for a
+wunderhacker), but haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware:
-+ How to get it
-================
+ * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
+ * i386-unknown-solaris2
+ * mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
+ * {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix
-The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be
-self-explanatory:
+The builder's guide on the web site gives a complete run-down of what
+ports work; it can be found at
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/building/building-guide.html
-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)!
+Mailing lists
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use
+the web interfaces at
-+ System requirements
-======================
+ http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
+ http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs
-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:
+There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on
+www.haskell.org; for the full list, see
- * i386-unknown-{linux,solaris2,freebsd,netbsd,cygwin32}
- * sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}
- * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
+ http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/
-Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy, but
-haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware:
+Please report bugs using our SourceForge page at
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghc/
- * alpha-dec-osf{2,3}
- * mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
- * {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix
+or send them to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org.
-The builder's guide included in distribution gives a complete
-run-down of what-ports-work; an on-line version can be found at
+GHC users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org. Bleeding
+edge CVS users party on cvs-ghc@haskell.org.
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/building_guide/installing.html