June 2019 - Glasgow-haskell-users

The future of the SPARC NCG backend
by Ben Gamari 27 Jun '19

27 Jun '19

Hello everyone, If you use (or think you might use in the future) GHC's SPARC NCG backend please do leave a note on #16882 [1]. My impression is that it has no users and no plausible means of testing. Consequently I am suggesting that we remove it in GHC 8.12. Cheers, - Ben [1] https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/issues/16882

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[ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.8.1-alpha2 is now available
by Ben Gamari 22 Jun '19

22 Jun '19

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-…

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Re: [ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.8.1-alpha2 is now available
by Ben Gamari 17 Jun '19

17 Jun '19

That is true and this will be fixed for the release candidate. However Debian 8 is now no longer Debian's current stable release so I wasn't prioritizing this issue. If the lack of a Debian 8 distribution is preventing anyone from testing please let me know. Cheers, - Ben On June 17, 2019 6:24:16 AM EDT, Matthew Pickering <matthewtpickering(a)gmail.com> wrote: >There seems to be no debian8 bindist which is different from every >release at least back to ghc-8.0.1. > >On Sat, Jun 15, 2019 at 8:36 PM Ben Gamari <ben(a)well-typed.com> wrote: >> >> 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-… >> _______________________________________________ >> ghc-devs mailing list >> ghc-devs(a)haskell.org >> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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Typed hole improvements
by David Feuer 07 Jun '19

07 Jun '19

I've been playing around with 8.6.3, and I've really been appreciating the improvements in typed hole messages. Both the information about constraints and the suggestions for filling the holes have proven valuable in heavily typish programming. Thanks! One thing that's still not where I'd like it to be is the equality constraint display. I recognize this is a Hard Problem. But digging through something like x ~ C y z x ~ C y1 z2 D p b ~ q z y1 to get b ~ y gets tiresome. Is there room for improvement here? If not, are there any programs around using the GHC API to offer an interactive system for such calculations? It'd be quite helpful when seeing such constraints to be able to express special interest in a particular type variable, for example.

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