% Building and installing the Glasgow Functional Programming Tools Suite
%
-% Version 2.10
+% Version 3.00
% July 1997
\documentstyle[11pt,literate]{article}
\begin{document}
\title{Building and installing the Glasgow Functional Programming Tools Suite\\
-Version~2.10}
+Version~3.00}
\author{The GHC Team\\
Department of Computing Science\\
University of Glasgow\\
- The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 2.10
+ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 3.00
==============================================
We are pleased to announce a new release of the Glasgow Haskell
-Compiler (GHC), version 2.10. Source and Binary distribution is freely
+Compiler (GHC), version 3.00. Source and Binary 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
=============
-Release 2.10 is a full binary release (at least for the platforms we
-have access to, other builds are solicited). We hope this will be a
-solid release - barring any unforseen problems this should be the end
-of the 2.xx line.
-
-Major new things in this release:
-
- * better -fwarn-overlapping-patterns checking,
- * Happy is no longer included in binary distributions:
- we're making separate Happy binaries, see
- ftp://ftp.dcs.gla.ac.uk/pub/haskell/happy
- * lots of bug fixes.
-
-The next release will likely be GHC 3.00, containing mult-parameter
-type classes amongst other things. As of the next release, we will no
-longer support building with GHC 0.29.
-
-Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the GHC Team!
+(ToDo)
+ Mailing lists
================
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:
- * alpha-dec-osf2
+ * alpha-dec-osf{2,3}
* hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
* sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2}
* mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
guide included in distribution gives a complete run-down of what-ports-work;
an on-line version can be found at
- http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/ghc-doc/install-guide.html
+ http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/3.00/installation_guide/installing_toc.html
EOF
-The Glamorous Glasgow Haskell Compiler, version 2.10, patchlevel 1
+The Glamorous Glasgow Haskell Compiler, version 3.00, patchlevel 0
-This is version 2.10 of the Glorious Glasgow Haskell compilation
-system (GHC). GHC 2.10 is a compiler for Haskell 1.4.
+This is version 3.00 of the Glorious Glasgow Haskell compilation
+system (GHC). GHC 3.00 is a compiler for Haskell 1.4.
Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language.
Haskell 1.4 is the current version of the language, released in
--- /dev/null
+* Multi-parameter type classes are fully implemented. There is more
+ sharing of dictionaries than in 2.10, so there's a chance that
+ efficiency will increase a little too.
+
+* Error messages from the type checker should be noticeably improved
+
+* Warnings for unused bindings (-fwarn-unused-names)
+ [I havn't updated the driver to deal with this; can you pls?]
+ In general, are warnings properly documented, since that's
+ something GHC does much better now?
+
+* The "boing" example works, and many other minor bug fixes.
+
+Internally there are the following changes
+
+* Can only be built with 2.10 or later; committed to Haskell 1.4
+ module system and libraries. Much cruft removed as a result.
+
+* Dramatic clean-up of the PprStyle stuff. No explicit "sty" parameters
+ now; it's all handled under the hood in Outputable.lhs
+
+* The type Type has been substantially changed. Usage types have
+ gone away entirely. Type is parameterised wrt the "flexi" slot
+ in type variables, rather than wrt the type variable itself.
+ That means that many instance decls become much simpler, because
+ they are polymorphic in the "flexi" slot rather than needing
+ (say) Outputable on the type variable.
+
+* The dictionary for each class is represented by a new
+ data type for that purpose, rather than by a tuple. That in
+ turn means that Type can be a straightforward instance of Eq and Ord.
+ No need for eqSimpleTy, eqTy.
+
+* The resulting compiler is just slightly (2%) shorter than the
+ old one in terms of source code size.
+