- The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 4.04
+ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 4.06
==============================================
We are pleased to announce a new release of the Glasgow Haskell
-Compiler (GHC), version 4.04. The source distribution is freely
+Compiler (GHC), version 4.06. The source distribution is freely
available via the World-Wide Web and through anon. FTP; details below.
Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language; the
+ What's new
=============
- - GHC is now officially Open Source, see the LICENSE file in the
- distribution for details.
+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!)
- - Rewrite rules can be specified in the source using the RULES
- pragma. This is used for automatic fusion of common list functions.
+Apart from that, there are the following changes
- - Performance tuning: compiled programs now allocate 30% less
- and run 20% faster on average compared to GHC 4.02.
+ - 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.
- - GHC now uses a Happy parser instead of the old yacc/lex one.
+ 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.
+
+ - Support for "foreign export dynamic".
+
+ - Clean up of concurrent I/O system; in particular, I/O is now non-blocking,
+ except (alas) on stdout/stderr for tiresome reasons.
+
+ - Some refinements to the exceptions mechanism:
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/users_guide/release-4-06.html#exc-changes-406
+
+ - More performance tuning: compiled programs now allocate 10% less memory
+ than 4.04
For full details see the release notes:
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/users_guide/users_guide-1.html#ss1.4
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/users_guide/release-4-06.html
+ Mailing lists
================
* mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
* {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix
-The installer's guide included in distribution gives a complete
+The builder's guide included in distribution gives a complete
run-down of what-ports-work; an on-line version can be found at
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/installation_guide/installing.html
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/4.06/building_guide/installing.html