Snapshot release and DPH

Ian, Simon just told us on the phone that you agreed to make a snapshot release of GHC (instead of a full release). In that snapshot release, could you include DPH (and associated libraries)? That is, make a snapshot of the entire HEAD instead of just the parts that go into a full release. The reason is that we would like to include DPH into the release. However, our usual approach of distributing the DPH libraries separately via Hackage will not work for a snapshot as the libraries on Hackage will likely not build with the snapshot. (This should be fine as the reason for not having DPH in a full release was to avoid sneaking it into the Haskell Platform with GHC, but a snapshot doesn't go into the Platform anyway.) Manuel

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 3:16 AM, Manuel M T Chakravarty < chak@cse.unsw.edu.au> wrote:
Ian,
Simon just told us on the phone that you agreed to make a snapshot release of GHC (instead of a full release).
Is a snapshot the same as a release candidate (i.e. should I try to run the pre-release performance benchmarks on it)? -- Johan

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 08:04:44AM -0700, Johan Tibell wrote:
Is a snapshot the same as a release candidate
No: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/WorkingConventions/Releases#Snapsho...
(i.e. should I try to run the pre-release performance benchmarks on it)?
Well, if there are any performance regressions in a snapshot release then it's better to find out immediately than when we're trying to put a real release out. (in fact, I think it's quite likely that a constant factor performance regression discovered once the RC phase has started wouldn't be fixed before the release). Thanks Ian

On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Ian Lynagh
Well, if there are any performance regressions in a snapshot release then it's better to find out immediately than when we're trying to put a real release out.
(in fact, I think it's quite likely that a constant factor performance regression discovered once the RC phase has started wouldn't be fixed before the release).
I most definitely agree. I just don't have the cycles to do these things very often (as it's quite a manual process right now). The idea is to eventually automated the nofib runs to run nightly. We're not there yet I'm afraid. :/ -- Johan
participants (3)
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Ian Lynagh
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Johan Tibell
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Manuel M T Chakravarty