- The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 2.09
- ==============================================
-We are pleased to announce a new release of the Glasgow Haskell
-Compiler (GHC), version 2.09. Source distribution is freely available
-via the World-Wide Web and through anon. FTP; details below.
+ =============================================================
+ The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 6.4
+ =============================================================
-Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language; the
-current language version is 1.4, agreed in April, 1997. Haskell
-related information is available from the Haskell home page at
+The GHC Team is pleased to announce a new major release of GHC. It
+has been a long time since the last major release (Dec 2003!), and a
+lot has happened:
- http://haskell.org/
+ - GADTs (Generalised Abstract Datatypes) are supported
-+ What's new
-=============
+ - STM (Software Transactional Memory) is implemented
-Release 2.09 contains some library changes that may break programs
-using glasgow extensions. The main points:
+ - Full support for Cabal and a much improved package framework
- * PrimIO has been removed, replaced by IO in all places
- (including the type of C calls).
- * The types of IO and ST have changed, to make them more
- efficient. This won't bite you unless you go digging
- around in the IO or ST monads, which you shouldn't...
- * Several extension libraries have been moved to be
- compatible with Hugs. See
+ - Better support for mutually-recursive modules
- ftp://haskell.org/pub/reid/libs971028/libs.html
-
- for the definitions of the new libraries.
- * Several of the interfaces exported by GlaExts are deprecated,
- as they have been moved into common libraries (ST for instance).
- GlaExts will eventually contain only extensions that are
- exclusive to GHC.
+ - A complete rewrite of the back end
+
+ - Accurate source locations in error messages
+
+ - Lots of new libraries
+
+The full release notes are here:
+
+ http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.4/html/users_guide/release-6-4.html
+
+How to get it
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be self-explanatory:
+
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
-We've also fixed several bugs, one space leak, and added better
-handling of warnings (-W, -Wall and -Wnot flags). As usual, see the
-release notes in the Users' Guide for the full story.
+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.
-+ Mailing lists
-================
+Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your
+system isn't available yet, please try again later.
-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-<which> Your Name <your-email@where.you.are>
-Please send bug reports about GHC to glasgow-haskell-bugs@dcs.gla.ac.uk ; GHC
-users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@dcs.gla.ac.uk
+Background
+~~~~~~~~~~
+Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the
+current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998 and
+revised December 2002.
+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.
-+ On-line GHC-related resources
-================================
+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).
+
+
+On-line GHC-related resources
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
-GHC home page http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/
-Haskell home page http://haskell.org/
-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
+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
+
-+ How to get it
-================
+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:
-The easy way is to go to the WWW GHC distribution page, which should
-be self-explanatory:
+ * i386-unknown-{linux,*bsd,mingw32}
+ * sparc-sun-solaris2
+ * powerpc-apple-darwin (MacOS X)
+ * powerpc-apple-linux
- ftp://ftp.dcs.gla.ac.uk/pub/haskell/glasgow/README.html
+Ports to other platforms are possible with varying degrees of
+difficulty. The builder's guide on the web site gives a complete
+run-down of what ports work and how to go about porting to a new
+platform; it can be found at
-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)!
+ http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building
-+ System requirements
-======================
+Mailing lists
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use
+the web interfaces at
-To compile up this source-only release, you need a machine with 16+MB
-memory, GNU C (`gcc'), `perl' plus a version of GHC installed (either
-version 0.29 or 2.02 onwards). We have seen GHC work on these platforms:
+ http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
+ http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs
- * alpha-dec-osf2
- * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
- * sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}
- * mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
- * i386-unknown-{linux,solaris2,freebsd,cygwin32}.
- * {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix
+There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on
+www.haskell.org; for the full list, see
+
+ http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/
+
+Please report bugs using our SourceForge page at
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghc/
-Similar platforms should work with minimal hacking effort. The installer's
-guide included in distribution gives a complete run-down of what-ports-work;
-an on-line version can be found at
+or send them to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org.
- http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/ghc-doc/install-guide.html
+GHC users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org. Bleeding
+edge CVS users party on cvs-ghc@haskell.org.
-EOF
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