The Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 4.04 ============================================== We are pleased to announce a new release of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC), version 4.04. The source distribution is freely available via the World-Wide Web and through anon. FTP; details below. Haskell is "the" standard lazy functional programming language; the current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998. Haskell related information is available from the Haskell home page at http://haskell.org/ GHC's Web page lives at http://research.microsoft.com/users/t-simonm/ghc/ + What's new ============= - GHC is now officially Open Source, see the LICENSE file in the distribution for details. - Rewrite rules can be specified in the source using the RULES pragma. This is used for automatic fusion of common list functions. - Performance tuning: compiled programs now allocate 30% less and run 20% faster on average compared to GHC 4.02. - GHC now uses a Happy parser instead of the old yacc/lex one. For full details see the release notes: http://research.microsoft.com/users/t-simonm/ghc/Docs/latest/users_guide/users_guide-1.html#ss1.4 + Mailing lists ================ We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, send mail to majordomo@haskell.org; the msg body should be: subscribe glasgow-haskell- Your Name Please send bug reports about GHC to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org ; GHC users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org + On-line GHC-related resources ================================ Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web: GHC home page http://research.microsoft.com/users/t-simonm/ghc/ Haskell home page http://haskell.org/ comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/faq.html + How to get it ================ The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be self-explanatory: http://research.microsoft.com/users/t-simonm/ghc/ 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)! + System requirements ====================== To compile up this source-only release, you need a machine with 32+MB memory, GNU C (`gcc'), `perl' plus a version of GHC installed (3.02 at least). This release is known to work on the following platforms: * i386-unknown-{linux,solaris2,freebsd,cygwin32} * sparc-sun-{sunos4,solaris2} * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10} Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy, but haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware: * alpha-dec-osf{2,3} * mips-sgi-irix{5,6} * {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix The installer's guide included in distribution gives a complete run-down of what-ports-work; an on-line version can be found at http://research.microsoft.com/users/t-simonm/ghc/Docs/latest/installation_guide/installing.html