The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 2.02 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We are pleased to announce the first release of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC, version 2.02) for *Haskell 1.4*. Sources and binaries are freely available by anonymous FTP and on the World-Wide Web; details below. Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language; the current language version is 1.3, agreed in May, 1996. The Haskell Report is online at http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/1.4/haskell-report.html GHC 2.02 is a beta-quality release - some highlights: * It is reliable. It has been extensively tested against a large suite of Haskell 1.2 programs, but not so extensively tested against Haskell 1.4 programs because we don't have a comprehensive set (Donations of Haskell 1.4 programs to our test suite are most welcome). * It should generate good code. All the optimisations that GHC 0.29 used to do are back in, with the exception of specialisation. It ought to be the case that GHC 2.02 outperforms GHC 0.29, because it has a much better handle on cross-module inlining, but there's a good chance that there are performance "holes" lurking. We have yet to make a systematic comparison. (Please send us programs where 2.02 does noticeably worse than 0.29.) * It is more expensive than it should be. GHC 2.02 has received even less attention to its own performance. At present it eats more space and time than GHC 0.29, especially for very small programs. We're working on this. * A couple of Haskell 1.4 features are incompletely supported, notably polymorphic strictness annotations, and Unicode. If you want to use Haskell 1.4, this is a good moment to switch. If you don't need the Haskell 1.4 extensions, then stay with GHC 0.29. If you want to hack on GHC itself, then 2.02 is definitely for you. The release notes comment further on this point. GHC 2.02 is substantially changed from 2.01. Changes worth noting include: * The whole front end, which deals with the module system, has been rewritten. The interface file format has changed. * GHC 2.02 comes complete with Green Card, a C foreign language interface for GHC. Green card is a pre-processor that scans Haskell source files for Green Card directives, which it expands into tons of "ccall" boilerplate that marshalls your arguments to and from C. * GHC 2.02 is available for Win32 platforms. From now on, Win32 (Windows NT and Windows 95) will be a fully supported platform for GHC. * GHC 2.02 supports full cross module inlining. Unlike 0.29 and its predecessors, inlining can happen even if the inlined body mentions a function or type that is not itself exported. This is one place Haskell 1.4's new module system really pays off. * Like 2.01, GHC 2.02 aborts a compilation if it decides that nothing that the module imports *and acually uses* has changed. This decision is now taken by the compiler itself, rather than by a Perl script (as in 2.01) which sometimes got it wrong. * The ghc/lib libraries are much more systematically organised. * There's a completely new "make" system. This will mainly affect people who want the source distribution, who will hopefully find it much, much, easier than grappling with the old Jmakefiles. Even for binary installation, the procedure is a little simpler, though. Please see the release notes for a complete discussion of What's New. To run this release, you need a machine with 16+MB memory (more if building from sources), GNU C (`gcc'), and `perl'. We have seen GHC 2.01 work on these platforms: alpha-dec-osf2, hppa1.1-hp-hpux9, sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}, mips-sgi-irix5, and i386-unknown-{linux,solaris2,freebsd,cygwin32}. Similar platforms should work with minimal hacking effort. The installer's guide give a complete run-down of what-ports-work. Binaries are distributed in `bundles', e.g. a "profiling bundle" or a "concurrency bundle" for your platform. Just grab the ones you need. 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)! We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, send mail to majordomo@dcs.gla.ac.uk; the msg body should be: subscribe glasgow-haskell- Your Name Please send bug reports about GHC to glasgow-haskell-bugs@dcs.gla.ac.uk. Simon Peyton Jones Dated: March 1997 Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web: GHC home page http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/ Glasgow FP group page http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/ comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/faq.html ====================================================================== How to get GHC 2.02: This release is available by anonymous FTP from the main Haskell archive sites, in the directory pub/haskell/glasgow: ftp.dcs.gla.ac.uk (130.209.240.50) ftp.cs.chalmers.se (129.16.227.140) haskell.cs.yale.edu (128.36.11.43) The Glasgow site is mirrored by src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.43.1), in computing/programming/languages/haskell/glasgow. These are the available files (.gz files are gzipped) -- some are `on demand', ask if you don't see them: README.html A WWW `front-end' to the contents of the glasgow directory. ghc-2.02-src.tar.gz The source distribution; about 3MB. ghc-2.02.ANNOUNCE This file. ghc-2.02.{README,RELEASE-NOTES} From the distribution; for those who want to peek before FTPing... ghc-2.02-ps-docs.tar.gz Main GHC documents in PostScript format; in case your TeX setup doesn't agree with our DVI files... ghc-2.02-.tar.gz Basic binary distribution for a particular . Unpack and go: you can compile and run Haskell programs with nothing but one of these files. NB: does *not* include profiling (see below). ==> alpha-dec-osf2 hppa1.1-hp-hpux9 i386-unknown-freebsd i386-unknown-linux i386-unknown-solaris2 i386-unknown-cygwin32 m68k-sun-sunos4 mips-sgi-irix5 sparc-sun-sunos4 sparc-sun-solaris2 ghc-2.02--.tar.gz ==> as above ==> prof (profiling) conc (concurrent Haskell) par (parallel) gran (GranSim parallel simulator) ticky (`ticky-ticky' counts -- for implementors) prof-conc (profiling for "conc[urrent]") prof-ticky (ticky for "conc[urrent]") ghc-2.02-hc-files.tar.gz Basic set of intermediate C (.hc) files for the compiler proper, the prelude, and `Hello, world'. Used for bootstrapping the system. About 4MB. ghc-2.02--hc-files.tar.gz Further sets of .hc files, for building other "bundles", e.g., profiling. ghc-2.02-hi-files-.tar.gz Sometimes it's more convenient to use a different set of interface files than the ones in *-src.tar.gz. (The installation guide will advise you of this.)