<sect2>
<title>User-visible compiler changes</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Majorly improved support for Windows platforms. Binary
+ builds are now entirely freestanding. There is no longer any
+ need to install Cygwin or Mingwin to use it. It's a
+ one-click-install-and-off-you-go story now.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Several small changes to bring GHC into line with the
+ newest Haskell 98 report.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>RTS options can now be specified using the environment
+ variable <envar>GHCRTS</envar>.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>The maximum heap size, set with
+ <literal>+RTS -M<replaceable>size</replaceable></literal>,
+ now defaults to unlimited. We recommend however that you set
+ a maximum heap size appropriate for your machine using the
+ <envar>GHCRTS</envar> variable.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Thanks to the heroic efforts of Ken Shan
+ <email>ken@digitas.harvard.edu</email>, GHC now works again on
+ the Alpha architecture (just Tru64 at the moment), and many
+ 64-bit bugs have been shaken out. Interactive mode and the
+ native code generator do not currently work, sorry.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>New option: <option>-fno-code</option> which causes GHC
+ to omit code generation and all future compilation stages (see
+ <xref linkend="options-codegen">).</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>New option <option>-package-conf
+ <replaceable>file</replaceable></option>. This makes GHC read
+ additional package descriptions from
+ <replaceable>file</replaceable>. See <xref
+ linkend="using-local-packages">.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para><option>+RTS
+ -i<replaceable>seconds</replaceable></option> flag reinstated for heap
+ profiling. See <xref linkend="prof-rts-options">.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para><option>-funbox-strict-fields</option> now works
+ correctly. See <xref linkend="options-f">.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Many bug fixes related to implicit-parameter support.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Data declarations with no constructors are allowed. This
+ facilitates types whose only value is bottom, and which have
+ no representation.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ You can disconnect numeric syntax from the Prelude syntax.
+ Doing this means you can define your own arithmetic. The
+ relevant flag is <option>-fno-implicit-prelude</option>. See
+ <xref linkend="options-language">.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
</sect2>
<sect2>
- <title>New experimental features</title>
+ <title>User-visible interpreter (GHCi) changes</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>GHCi now works on Windows.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Partial FFI support in GHCi. At the moment, foreign
+ import (static and dynamic) are supported on x86 and sparc
+ platforms.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>New interpreter command <literal>:add</literal>, to add
+ modules to the current bunch. See
+ <xref linkend="ghci-commands">.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>New interpreter command <literal>:info</literal>, to provide
+ information on values, types and classes, a la Hugs. See
+ <xref linkend="ghci-commands">.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Multiple target modules are supported. You may specify
+ multiple modules for the <literal>:add</literal> and
+ <literal>:load</literal> commands. From the command line, you
+ may specify multiple modules when starting GHCi and when
+ compiling in <option>--make</option> mode. See
+ <xref linkend="ghci-commands">.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>New flags <option>-ignore-dot-ghci</option> and
+ <option>-read-dot-ghci</option>. See
+ <xref linkend="ghci-dot-files">.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>When starting GHCi from the command line, you may now
+ use the flags
+ <option>-L<replaceable>library-path</replaceable></option> and
+ <option>-l<replaceable>library-name</replaceable></option> to
+ specify libraries to be loaded into the interactive
+ session. See <xref linkend="ghci-invokation">.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>User-visible library changes</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
+ <para>The <literal>SocketPrim</literal> and
+ <literal>BSD</literal> modules in the <literal>net</literal>
+ package have been re-written to use the FFI, be more portable,
+ and be more thread-safe. There are minor user-visible
+ changes: the functions <function>writeSocket</function>,
+ <function>readSocket</function> and
+ <function>readSocketAll</function> have been removed (use
+ <function>socketToHandle</function> and
+ <literal>Handle</literal> operations instead).</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
<para>New function: <function>Exception.throwDynTo</function>.
See <xref linkend="sec-Dynamic-Exceptions">.</para>
</listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para><literal>BlockedOnDeadMVar</literal> and
+ <literal>ThreadKilled</literal> exceptions no longer generate
+ any output by default for forked threads.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para><literal>Weak.addForeignFinalizer</literal> is
+ deprecated; use the <literal>ForeignPtr</literal> library
+ instead.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>The I/O library has been completely rewritten, using the
+ new FFI libraries and <command>hsc2hs</command>. The main
+ improvement is to the way streams are handled: simultaneous
+ read and write with multiple threads using a socket or FIFO is
+ now possible, whereas before it was necessary to use two
+ separate handles.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>As a result of the I/O rewrite, the extensions
+ <literal>IOExts.hConnectTo</literal> and
+ <literal>IOExts.withHandleFor</literal> have been removed.
+ Also, <literal>hGetBuf</literal> and
+ <literal>hPutBuf</literal> have been removed, and
+ <literal>hGetBufFull</literal> and
+ <literal>hPutBufFull</literal> have been renamed to
+ <literal>hGetBuf</literal> and <literal>hPutBuf</literal>
+ respectively (similary for the <literal>BA</literal>
+ versions of these functions).</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para><literal>System.exitWith</literal> now throws
+ <literal>ExitException</literal> rather than causing the
+ program to exit immediately. <literal>ExitException</literal>
+ is by default caught by the top level exception handler in the
+ main thread, where it causes the program to exit. Hence, calling
+ <literal>System.exitWith</literal> in GHCi no longer causes
+ GHCi itself to exit.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>New function: <literal>MVar.addMVarFinalizer</literal>
+ (see <xref linkend="sec-MVars">).</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>New module <literal>SystemExts</literal> for useful
+ system-ish functionality (see <xref
+ linkend="sec-SystemExts">).</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para><literal>SocketPrim</literal>: added instances of
+ <literal>Eq</literal> and <literal>Show</literal> for the
+ <literal>Socket</literal> type.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>The implementation of
+ <literal>MarsalAlloc.allocaBytes</literal> now uses GHC's
+ internal allocator and is much faster than before. As a
+ result, the <literal>UnsafeCString</literal> type and
+ functions are no longer necessary and have been removed from
+ <literal>CString</literal>.</para>
+ </listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</sect2>
<sect2>
- <title>Build system changes</title>
+ <title>New experimental features</title>
+
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <!-- don't forget: 31-bit support -->
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Partial support for hierarchical module names.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Mucho hacking on the .NET code generator, including
+ some FFI extensions for .NET interop. It's still
+ severely b0rk3d, so won't do anything useful. Yet.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>Emission of external Core format. The goal is for
+ other tools to be able to grab the Core resulting from GHC's
+ front end manglings and optimisations. Core format is
+ formally defined by the document <ulink url="http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/papers/core.ps.gz"
+ <citetitle>An External Representation for the GHC Core Language</citetitle></ulink>.
+ We also have sample
+ tools for reading, writing and typechecking external Core,
+ available in the source distribution directory <literal>/fptools/ghc/utils/ext-core</literal>.
+ Ultimately we plan that Core files can also be read by
+ GHC. The relevant flag is <option>-fext-core</option>.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>A compacting garbage collector has been added. It isn't
+ on by default, because it is somewhat slower than the existing
+ copying collector, but can be automatically enabled when
+ memory gets tight by setting the maximum heap size (see <xref
+ linkend="rts-options-gc">). Compaction works together with
+ the existing generational scheme: it is only used on the
+ oldest generation. Despite the "experimental"
+ classification, we've jumped up and down quite significantly
+ on this code, and it seems stable.</para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Internal changes</title>
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>The implementation of the <literal>Array</literal>,
+ <literal>IArray</literal> and <literal>MArray</literal>
+ libraries have been rewritten so that bulk operations like
+ <literal>listArray</literal> and <literal>elems</literal> do
+ less range checking and hence go faster.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>The <literal>CPUTime</literal> library has been replaced
+ by one written using the FFI. No externally visible
+ changes.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>The compiler has a new strictness-and-absence analyser,
+ which is alleged to help it generate better code.</para>
+ </listitem>
+
+ </itemizedlist>
</sect2>
</sect1>
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