From:	 Gregory Wright <gwright@packetstorm.com>
To:	 lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Haskell updates
Date:	 Wed, 20 Jun 2001 14:53:53 -0400


Updates of two Haskell compilers were recently released:

Version 5.00.2 of GHC, the Glasgow Haskell compiler was released on 18 
June 2001.
The announcement:

   The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 5.00.2
  ==============================================================

We are pleased to announce a new patchlevel release of the Glasgow
Haskell Compiler (GHC), version 5.00.2.  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, and Solaris(sparc) are also available.

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 in 5.00.2
======================

Fixed a few more bugs which turned out to be showstoppers for various
people.  Symptoms of the fixed bugs are:
* Panics in the bytecode (interactive) linker (two different bugs).
* Compiled code dies with a segfault (two different bugs).
* Interpreted code crashes or acts weird.
* A panic in the CPR analyser.
* An infinite loop in the strictness analyser.
* Nested comments are not properly handled during module chasing.
* :module command doesn't accept underscores in module names.
* -L<dir> doesn't work on the ghci command line.
* Posix.executeFile mistakenly propagates SIGVTALRM to children.
* Exceptions during an interactive session cause the UI to forget
  some important state information.
* (a new feature) Packages can now loaded at the ghci prompt.
  Do ":s -package <packagename>".



The York Haskell compiler, nhc98, released version 1.06 on 8 June 2001.
The announcement:


      nhc98 1.06 (2001-06-08) features

    * New: Updated the Prelude/Libraries to match the newly revised
      Haskell'98 Report.
    * Update: Default build target is now basic + tracer (was just basic).
    * Update: Building with gcc now builds everything with gcc,
      including profiling and tracing. This is much faster.
    * Bugfix: A bad interaction between Java and Cygwin to do with Unix
      vs. Windows pathnames. (Visible only in Hat-trail and Hood.)
    * Bugfix: An 'hi' built with just a C compiler seg-faulted, due to
      mismatched .c file versions in the 1.04 source package.
    * Bugfix: Recognise an existing ghc-5 installation.
    * Bugfix: Missing include for Cygwin.
    * Bugfix: Minor filename recognition error in hat-stack and
      hat-connect.
    * Bugfix: Filename extension for time profiling changed to .z.o to
      avoid Windows conflicts between .T.o and .t.o. The compiler flags
      -T and -t are unchanged, -z is a new synonym for -t.



Best Wishes,

Gregory Wright
PacketStorm Communications
20 Meridian Road
Eatontown, New Jersey 07724

gwright@packetstorm.com