Hello everyone, The GHC team is pleased to announce the second and likely last alpha release of GHC 8.8.1. The source distribution, binary distributions, and documentation are available at https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.8.1-alpha2 A draft of the release notes is also available [1]. This release is the culmination of over 3000 commits by over one hundred contributors and has several new features and numerous bug fixes relative to GHC 8.6: * Profiling now works correctly on 64-bit Windows (although still may be problematic on 32-bit Windows due to platform limitations; see #15934) * A new code layout algorithm for amd64's native code generator * The introduction of a late lambda-lifting pass which may reduce allocations significantly for some programs. * Further work on Trees That Grow, enabling improved code re-use of the Haskell AST in tooling * More locations where users can write `forall` (GHC Proposal #0007) * Further work on the Hadrian build system This release brings a number of fixes since alpha 1: * A number of linker fixes (#16779, #16784) * The process, binary, Cabal, time, terminfo libraries have all been bumped to their final release versions * A regression rendering TemplateHaskell unusable in cross-compiled configurations has been fixed (#16331) * A regression causing compiler panics on compilation of some programs has been fixed (#16449) * -Wmissing-home-modules now handles hs-boot files correctly (#16551) * A regression causing some programs to fail at runtime has been fixed (#16066) Due to on-going work on our release and testing infrastructure this cycle is proceeding at a pace significantly slower than expected. However, we anticipate that this investment will allow us to release a more reliable, easier-to-install compiler on the planned six-month release cadence in the future. As always, if anything looks amiss do let us know. Happy compiling! Cheers, - Ben [1] https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/8.8.1-alpha2/docs/html/users_guide/8.8.1-n...