July 2022 - Glasgow-haskell-users

[Haskell] [ANNOUNCE] GHC 9.2.4 released
by Zubin Duggal 21 Aug '22

21 Aug '22

The GHC developers are very happy to at announce the availability of GHC 9.2.4. Binary distributions, source distributions, and documentation are available at [`downloads.haskell.org`](https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.2.4). Download Page: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_9_2_4.html Blog Post: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/blog/20220728-ghc-9.2.4-released.html This release will include: - The new `DeepSubsumption` language extension which reverses the effects of the [Simplified Subsumption Proposal] introduced in GHC 9.0. This is an attempt to make GHC 9.2.4 more backwards compatible with GHC 8.10 and eases migration for users who depended on this feature. This extension is enabled by default with the `Haskell2010` and `Haskell98` languages but disabled with the `GHC2021` language originally introduced in GHC 9.2.1. See the [Deep Subsumption Proposal] for more details. - Fixes for segfaults that may arise due to a bug in the implementation of the `keepAlive#` primop. This may regress performance for certain programs which use this primop or functions which use the primop, such as `withForeignPtr`. These regressions are mostly small, but can be larger in certain edge cases. Judicious use of `unsafeWithForeignPtr` when its argument is known not to statically diverge can mitigate these in many cases. It is our judgment that the critical correctness issues justify the regression in performance and that it is important to get a release out with the fix while we work on a better approach which will improve performance for future releases (#21708). We have a [wiki page](https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/proposal/with-combinator) that tracks possible solutions to this problem, and Ben wrote a [blog post](https://www.haskell.org/ghc/blog/20210607-the-keepAlive-story.html) detailing the introduction of the `keepAlive#` primop and its history. - Fixes for a number of miscompilations on AArch64 and other platforms (#21624, #21773, #20735, #21685). - Fixes for segfaults due to bugs in the RTS and GC (#21708, #21880, #21885). - Fixing the behaviour of Ctrl-C with GHCi on Windows (#21889). - ... and much more. See the [release notes] for a full accounting. As some of the fixed issues do affect correctness users are encouraged to upgrade promptly. We would like to thank Microsoft Azure, GitHub, IOG, the Zw3rk stake pool, Tweag I/O, Serokell, Equinix, SimSpace, Haskell Foundation, and other anonymous contributors whose on-going financial and in-kind support has facilitated GHC maintenance and release management over the years. Finally, this release would not have been possible without the hundreds of open-source contributors whose work comprise this release. As always, do give this release a try and open a [ticket] if you see anything amiss. Happy compiling, - Zubin [ticket]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/new [release notes]: https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/9.2.4/docs/users_guide/9.2.4-notes.html [Simplified Subsumption Proposal]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0287-s… [Deep Subsumption Proposal]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0511-d…

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[ANNOUNCE] GHC 9.4.1-rc1 is now available
by Ben Gamari 27 Jul '22

27 Jul '22

The GHC developers are happy to announce the availability of the first (and likely last) release candidate of GHC 9.4.1. Binary distributions, source distributions, and documentation are available at [downloads.haskell.org] This major release will include: - A new profiling mode, `-fprof-late`, which adds automatic cost-center annotations to all top-level functions *after* Core optimisation has run. This provides informative profiles while interfering significantly less with GHC's aggressive optimisations, making it easier to understand the performance of programs which depend upon simplification.. - A variety of plugin improvements including the introduction of a new plugin type, *defaulting plugins*, and the ability for typechecking plugins to rewrite type-families. - An improved constructed product result analysis, allowing unboxing of nested structures, and a new boxity analysis, leading to less reboxing. - Introduction of a tag-check elision optimisation, bringing significant performance improvements in strict programs. - Generalisation of a variety of primitive types to be levity polymorphic. Consequently, the `ArrayArray#` type can at long last be retired, replaced by standard `Array#`. - Introduction of the `\cases` syntax from [GHC proposal 0302] - A complete overhaul of GHC's Windows support. This includes a migration to a fully Clang-based C toolchain, a deep refactoring of the linker, and many fixes in WinIO. - Support for multiple home packages, significantly improving support in IDEs and other tools for multi-package projects. - A refactoring of GHC's error message infrastructure, allowing GHC to provide diagnostic information to downstream consumers as structured data, greatly easing IDE support. - Significant compile-time improvements to runtime and memory consumption. - On overhaul of our packaging infrastructure, allowing full traceability of release artifacts and more reliable binary distributions. - Reintroduction of deep subsumption (which was previously dropped with the *simplified subsumption* change) as a language extension. - ... and much more. See the [release notes] for a full accounting. Note that, as 9.4.1 is the first release for which the released artifacts will all be generated by our Hadrian build system, it is possible that there will be packaging issues. If you enounter trouble while using a binary distribution, please open a [ticket]. Likewise, if you are a downstream packager, do consider migrating to [Hadrian] to run your build; the Hadrian build system can be built using `cabal-install`, `stack`, or the in-tree [bootstrap script]. We will be publishing a blog post describing the migration process to Hadrian in the coming weeks. We would like to thank Microsoft Azure, GitHub, IOG, the Zw3rk stake pool, Tweag I/O, Serokell, Equinix, SimSpace, the Haskell Foundation, and other anonymous contributors whose on-going financial and in-kind support has facilitated GHC maintenance and release management over the years. Finally, this release would not have been possible without the hundreds of open-source contributors whose work comprise this release. As always, do give this release a try and open a [ticket] if you see anything amiss. Happy testing, - Ben [downloads.haskell.org] https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.4.1-rc1/ [GHC proposal 0302]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0302-c… [ticket]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/new [bootstrap script]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/blob/e2520df3fffa0cf22fb19c5fb872832d1… [Hadrian]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/blob/e2520df3fffa0cf22fb19c5fb872832d1… [release notes]: https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/9.4.1-rc1/docs/users_guide/9.4.1-notes.h…

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Compilation of Overloaded strings and saving constant results
by Clinton Mead 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Hi All I'm presuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that when I have an overloaded string literal in my program, let's say it's overloaded to Text, the conversion from [Char] -> Text happens at runtime, instead of what would be ideal being that the compiler somehow does that conversion at compile time and puts the raw bytes that represent the Text object in the executable? If it does work like that, that's not a big deal. But let's say I have: f :: Text -> Text -> Text f x y = Text.concat ["Hello", x, "World", y] This is desugared like so: f :: Text -> Text -> Text f x y = Text.concat [fromString "Hello", x, fromString "World", y] Would there be a [Char] -> Text conversion from ['H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o'] -> Text "Hello" everytime 'f' is called, or is 'f' rewritten something like this: f :: Text -> Text -> Text f x y = Text.concat [hello, x, world, y] hello :: Text hello = fromString "Hello" world :: Text world = fromString "World" So the [Char] -> Text conversion is only done once and memomised? I guess this brings up the more general question, if I have this: f x = h x (g (42 :: Int)) Can I rely on GHC rewriting it like this? f x = h x y y = g (42 :: Int) Or is this a transformation I should do explicitly if I want to rely on it? (I've added ":: Int" because I guess it can't do this when there's polymorphism sneaking in) Thanks, Clinton

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