[ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.4.4 released

Hello everyone, The GHC team is pleased to announce the availability of GHC 8.4.4, a patch-level release in the 8.4 series. The source distribution, binary distributions, and documentation for this release are available at https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4 This release fixes several bugs present in 8.4.3 These include, - A bug which could result in memory unsafety with certain uses of `touch#` has been resolved. (#14346) - A compiler panic triggered by some GADT record updates has been fixed (#15499) - The `text` library has been updated, fixing several serious bugs in the version shipped with GHC 8.4.3 (see `text` issues #227, #221, and #197. - A serious code generation bug in the LLVM code generation, potentially resulting in incorrect evaluation of floating point expressions, has been fixed (#14251) As always, the full release notes can be found in the users guide, https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h... Thanks to everyone who has contributed to developing, documenting, and testing this release! As always, let us know if you encounter trouble. How to get it ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The easy way is to go to the web page, which should be self-explanatory: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ We supply binary builds in the native package format for many platforms, and the source distribution is available from the same place. Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your system isn't available yet, please try again later. Background ~~~~~~~~~~ Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language. GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell. Included is an optimising compiler generating efficient 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. 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 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web: GHC home page https://www.haskell.org/ghc/ GHC developers' home page https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Haskell home page https://www.haskell.org/ Supported Platforms ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The list of platforms we support, and the people responsible for them, is here: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Contributors Ports to other platforms are possible with varying degrees of difficulty. The Building Guide describes how to go about porting to a new platform: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building Developers ~~~~~~~~~~ We welcome new contributors. Instructions on accessing our source code repository, and getting started with hacking on GHC, are available from the GHC's developer's site run by Trac: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ Mailing lists ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use the web interfaces at https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-tickets There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on www.haskell.org; for the full list, see https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo Some GHC developers hang out on #haskell on IRC, too: https://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel Please report bugs using our bug tracking system. Instructions on reporting bugs can be found here:

On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 at 07:17, Ben Gamari
The GHC team is pleased to announce the availability of GHC 8.4.4
Thank you
As always, the full release notes can be found in the users guide,
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h... I think this base text is out of date, and could be dropped, right? I see that stm was also bumped: though it is not listed in https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h... Cheers, Jens

Jens Petersen
On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 at 07:17, Ben Gamari
wrote: The GHC team is pleased to announce the availability of GHC 8.4.4
Thank you
As always, the full release notes can be found in the users guide,
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h...
I think this base text is out of date, and could be dropped, right?
Indeed it is.
I see that stm was also bumped: though it is not listed in https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h...
Also true. However, in my mind this isn't nearly as significant as the `text` bump, which affects many users and fixes extremely bad misbehavior. Thanks for noticing these! Cheers - Ben

More seriously ghc-8.4.4 fails to build on ARM 32bit and 64bit due to the llvm changes afaict. I opened https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/15780 for this. Jens

Did this release fix the dataToTag# issue? I think that has a number of people concerned.
On Oct 18, 2018, 11:46 AM, at 11:46 AM, Ben Gamari
Jens Petersen
writes: On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 at 07:17, Ben Gamari
wrote: The GHC team is pleased to announce the availability of GHC 8.4.4
Thank you
As always, the full release notes can be found in the users guide,
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h...
I think this base text is out of date, and could be dropped, right?
Indeed it is.
I see that stm was also bumped: though it is not listed in
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h...
Also true. However, in my mind this isn't nearly as significant as the `text` bump, which affects many users and fixes extremely bad misbehavior.
Thanks for noticing these!
Cheers
- Ben
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Hey David, i'm looking at the git history andit doesn't seem to have any
commits between 8.4.3 and 8.4.4 related to the dataToTag issue
does any haskell code in the while trigger the bug on 8.4 series?
On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 11:06 AM David Feuer
Did this release fix the dataToTag# issue? I think that has a number of people concerned. On Oct 18, 2018, at 11:46 AM, Ben Gamari
wrote: Jens Petersen
writes: On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 at 07:17, Ben Gamari
wrote: The GHC team is pleased to announce the availability of GHC 8.4.4
Thank you
As always, the full release notes can be found in the users guide,
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h...
I think this base text is out of date, and could be dropped, right?
Indeed it is.
I see that stm was also bumped: though it is not listed in
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.4/docs/html/users_guide/8.4.4-notes.h...
Also true. However, in my mind this isn't nearly as significant as the `text` bump, which affects many users and fixes extremely bad misbehavior.
Thanks for noticing these!
Cheers
- Ben
------------------------------
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On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 4:43 PM Carter Schonwald
Hey David, i'm looking at the git history andit doesn't seem to have any commits between 8.4.3 and 8.4.4 related to the dataToTag issue
does any haskell code in the while trigger the bug on 8.4 series?
I don't think anyone knows. It seems clear that it's considerably easier to trigger the bug in 8.6, but as far as I can tell, there's no reason to believe that it couldn't be triggered by realistic code in 8.4.

David, when you say "dataToTag# issue", you mean #15696? It seems from the
discussion there that it is still under investigation.
--
Best, Artem
On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 at 17:02 David Feuer
On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 4:43 PM Carter Schonwald
wrote: Hey David, i'm looking at the git history andit doesn't seem to have any
commits between 8.4.3 and 8.4.4 related to the dataToTag issue
does any haskell code in the while trigger the bug on 8.4 series?
I don't think anyone knows. It seems clear that it's considerably easier to trigger the bug in 8.6, but as far as I can tell, there's no reason to believe that it couldn't be triggered by realistic code in 8.4. _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs

Hi all,
Just a quick update about #16969.
The primop itself is buggy in 8.4 (and it should be buggy even in older
versions -- although I haven't confirmed this) and 2 of the 3 regressions added
for it currently fail with GHC 8.4.4. I don't know what the plan is for fixing
it in 8.4, Ben may say more about this, but I'm guessing that we'll see another
8.4 release.
So if you're using the primop directly, just don't! If you're not using it
directly, then as David says the bug is much harder to trigger in GHC 8.4 (and
even older versions) than in GHC 8.6, but we don't know if it's _impossible_ to
trigger in GHC 8.4 and older versions.
We fixed the bug in GHC HEAD weeks ago (with Phab:5201), current investigation
in #15696 is not blocking any releases, we're just tying up some loose ends and
doing refactoring to handle some similar primops more uniformly. This is only
refactoring and documentation -- known bugs are already fixed.
(I now realize that it would've been better to do this in a separate ticket to
avoid confusion)
Ömer
Artem Pelenitsyn
David, when you say "dataToTag# issue", you mean #15696? It seems from the discussion there that it is still under investigation.
-- Best, Artem
On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 at 17:02 David Feuer
wrote: On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 4:43 PM Carter Schonwald
wrote: Hey David, i'm looking at the git history andit doesn't seem to have any commits between 8.4.3 and 8.4.4 related to the dataToTag issue
does any haskell code in the while trigger the bug on 8.4 series?
I don't think anyone knows. It seems clear that it's considerably easier to trigger the bug in 8.6, but as far as I can tell, there's no reason to believe that it couldn't be triggered by realistic code in 8.4. _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
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Sorry for the typos in my previous email.
#16969 -> #15696 (https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/15696)
regressions -> regression tests
Phab:5201 -> Phab:D5201 (https://phabricator.haskell.org/D5201)
By "the primop" I mean dataToTag#.
Ömer
Ömer Sinan Ağacan
Hi all,
Just a quick update about #16969.
The primop itself is buggy in 8.4 (and it should be buggy even in older versions -- although I haven't confirmed this) and 2 of the 3 regressions added for it currently fail with GHC 8.4.4. I don't know what the plan is for fixing it in 8.4, Ben may say more about this, but I'm guessing that we'll see another 8.4 release.
So if you're using the primop directly, just don't! If you're not using it directly, then as David says the bug is much harder to trigger in GHC 8.4 (and even older versions) than in GHC 8.6, but we don't know if it's _impossible_ to trigger in GHC 8.4 and older versions.
We fixed the bug in GHC HEAD weeks ago (with Phab:5201), current investigation in #15696 is not blocking any releases, we're just tying up some loose ends and doing refactoring to handle some similar primops more uniformly. This is only refactoring and documentation -- known bugs are already fixed.
(I now realize that it would've been better to do this in a separate ticket to avoid confusion)
Ömer
Artem Pelenitsyn
, 27 Eki 2018 Cmt, 00:18 tarihinde şunu yazdı: David, when you say "dataToTag# issue", you mean #15696? It seems from the discussion there that it is still under investigation.
-- Best, Artem
On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 at 17:02 David Feuer
wrote: On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 4:43 PM Carter Schonwald
wrote: Hey David, i'm looking at the git history andit doesn't seem to have any commits between 8.4.3 and 8.4.4 related to the dataToTag issue
does any haskell code in the while trigger the bug on 8.4 series?
I don't think anyone knows. It seems clear that it's considerably easier to trigger the bug in 8.6, but as far as I can tell, there's no reason to believe that it couldn't be triggered by realistic code in 8.4. _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
_______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
participants (7)
-
Artem Pelenitsyn
-
Ben Gamari
-
Carter Schonwald
-
David Feuer
-
David Feuer
-
Jens Petersen
-
Ömer Sinan Ağacan