[ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.6.1-beta1 available

Hello everyone, The GHC development team is very pleased to announce the first beta leading up to GHC 8.6.1 release. The usual release artifacts are available from https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1 This beta fixes most of the bugs reported in the first two alphas and brings all of the core libraries up to their final release versions. The 8.6 release fixes over 300 bugs from the 8.4 series and introduces a number of exciting features. These most notably include: * Significantly better handling of macOS linker command size limits, avoiding linker errors while linking large projects * A new deriving mechanism, `deriving via`, providing a convenient way for users to extend Haskell's typeclass deriving mechanism * Quantified constraints, allowing forall quantification in contexts * An early version of the GHCi `:doc` command * The `ghc-heap-view` package, allowing introspection into the structure of GHC's heap * Valid hole fit hints, helping the user to find terms to fill typed holes in their programs * The BlockArguments extension, allowing the `$` operator to be omitted in some unambiguous contexts * The next phase of the MonadFail proposal, enabling -XMonadFailDesugaring by default A full list of the changes in this release can be found in the release notes: https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/8.6.1-n... This will very likely be the last release before the final 8.6.1 so do give it a thorough testing and, as always, report any issues you encounter. Thanks for your help! Cheers, - Ben

Great news!
What are the new features there toward Dependent Typed Haskell?
На сб, 11.08.2018 г., 5:31 Ben Gamari
Hello everyone,
The GHC development team is very pleased to announce the first beta leading up to GHC 8.6.1 release. The usual release artifacts are available from
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1
This beta fixes most of the bugs reported in the first two alphas and brings all of the core libraries up to their final release versions.
The 8.6 release fixes over 300 bugs from the 8.4 series and introduces a number of exciting features. These most notably include:
* Significantly better handling of macOS linker command size limits, avoiding linker errors while linking large projects
* A new deriving mechanism, `deriving via`, providing a convenient way for users to extend Haskell's typeclass deriving mechanism
* Quantified constraints, allowing forall quantification in contexts
* An early version of the GHCi `:doc` command
* The `ghc-heap-view` package, allowing introspection into the structure of GHC's heap
* Valid hole fit hints, helping the user to find terms to fill typed holes in their programs
* The BlockArguments extension, allowing the `$` operator to be omitted in some unambiguous contexts
* The next phase of the MonadFail proposal, enabling -XMonadFailDesugaring by default
A full list of the changes in this release can be found in the release notes:
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/8.6.1-n...
This will very likely be the last release before the final 8.6.1 so do give it a thorough testing and, as always, report any issues you encounter. Thanks for your help!
Cheers,
- Ben _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users

On Aug 11, 2018, at 11:27 AM, Vassil Ognyanov Keremidchiev
wrote: What are the new features there toward Dependent Typed Haskell?
Ben's link to https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/8.6.1-n... https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/8.6.1-n... includes several items, pasted here: * A new StarIsType https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow... language extension has been added which controls whether * is parsed as Data.Kind.Type or a regular type operator. StarIsType https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow... is enabled by default. * CUSKs now require all kind variables to be explicitly quantified. This was already the case with TypeInType https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow..., but now PolyKinds https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow... also exhibits this behavior. * Functionality of TypeInType https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow... has been subsumed by PolyKinds https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow..., and it is now merely a shorthand for PolyKinds https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow..., DataKinds https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow..., and NoStarIsType https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow.... The users are advised to avoid TypeInType https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1-beta1/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow... due to its misleading name: the Type :: Type axiom holds regardless of whether it is enabled. These are small steps, to be sure, but there's quite a bit going on behind the scenes. For example see the "Coercion Quantification" and "Type-level visible type applications" to take place at HIW (https://icfp18.sigplan.org/track/hiw-2018-papers#event-overview https://icfp18.sigplan.org/track/hiw-2018-papers#event-overview). There are also a great many proposals in play at https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals More to come in the future, of course! Richard

On Sat, 11 Aug 2018 at 11:31, Ben Gamari
The GHC development team is very pleased to announce the first beta leading up to GHC 8.6.1 release.
Thank you! I have built it for Fedora and RHEL 7 in my Copr repo last week: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/petersen/ghc-8.6.1/ I was away last month, and I am sending this belatedly.
participants (4)
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Ben Gamari
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Jens Petersen
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Richard Eisenberg
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Vassil Ognyanov Keremidchiev