- The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 5.00
- ============================================================
+ =============================================================
+ The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 6.4
+ =============================================================
-We are pleased to announce a new major release of the Glasgow Haskell
-Compiler (GHC), version 5.00. The source distribution is freely
-available via the World-Wide Web and through anon. FTP, under a
-BSD-style license. See below for download details. Pre-built
-packages for Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Win32 are also available.
+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:
-Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the
-current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998.
-
-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, C++, whatever).
-
-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 at
-
- http://www.haskell.org/
-
-GHC's Web page lives at
-
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
-
-
-
- What's new
-============
-
-5.00 has been majorly revamped since the previous stable version, 4.08.2.
-This should be a stable release. Major changes since 4.08.2 are:
-
- - An interactive system, similar in style to Hugs. You can interactively
- load and unload modules, run expressions, ask the types of things.
- Module dependencies are tracked and chased automatically.
- Combinations of compiled and interpreted modules may be used.
- All the GHC libraries are available in interactive mode, as are
- most of the Glasgow extensions to Haskell 98. Compilation in
- interactive mode is fast enough to be useful.
+ - GADTs (Generalised Abstract Datatypes) are supported
- - Batch compilation of multiple modules at once, with automatic
- dependency chasing. For large programs this can halve compilation
- times, and removes the need for Makefiles.
+ - STM (Software Transactional Memory) is implemented
- - Enhanced package (library) management system. Packages may be
- installed and removed from an installation using the ghc-pkg tool.
+ - Full support for Cabal and a much improved package framework
- - Initial Unicode support - the Char type is now 31 bits.
+ - Better support for mutually-recursive modules
- - Sparc native code generator, giving much faster compilation on sparcs.
- (Native code generation for x86s has been available for a while).
+ - A complete rewrite of the back end
- - Improved heap profiling - you can restrict heap profiles
- by type, closure description, cost centre, and module.
+ - Accurate source locations in error messages
- - Support for the latest Foreign Function Interface (FFI)
- proposals.
+ - Lots of new libraries
- - A language extension: parallel list comprehensions.
+The full release notes are here:
- - The usual vast stack of bug fixes. Most reported bugs have been
- fixed.
+ http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.4/html/users_guide/release-6-4.html
-For full details see the release notes:
-
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/5.00/set/release-5-00.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 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.
- How to get it
-===============
+Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your
+system isn't available yet, please try again later.
-The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be
-self-explanatory:
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
-We supply binary builds in .rpm/.deb form for all you Linux junkies
-out there, and in InstallShield form for Windows folks. Everybody
-else gets a .tar.gz which can be installed where you want.
+Background
+~~~~~~~~~~
+Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the
+current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998 and
+revised December 2002.
-Once you have the distribution, please follow the pointers in the
-README file to find all of the documentation about this release.
+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.
+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
-===============================
+On-line GHC-related resources
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:
- System requirements
-=====================
-
-To compile programs with GHC, you need a machine with 32+MB memory, GNU C
+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:
- * i386-unknown-{linux,freebsd,mingw32}
+ * i386-unknown-{linux,*bsd,mingw32}
* sparc-sun-solaris2
+ * powerpc-apple-darwin (MacOS X)
+ * powerpc-apple-linux
-Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy (for a
-wunderhacker), but haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware:
-
- * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
- * i386-unknown-solaris2
- * alpha-dec-osf{2,3}
- * mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
- * {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix
-
-The builder's guide included in distribution gives a complete
-run-down of what ports work; an on-line version can be found at
+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
- http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/5.00/building/building-guide.html
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/building/
-
- Mailing lists
-===============
-
+Mailing lists
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use
the web interfaces at
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/
-Please send bug reports about GHC to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org;
+Please report bugs using our SourceForge page at
+
+ http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghc/
+
+or send them to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org.
+
GHC users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org. Bleeding
edge CVS users party on cvs-ghc@haskell.org.
+
projects / ghc-hetmet.git / blobdiff