The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 5.02.3 ============================================================== We are pleased to announce a new patchlevel release of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC), version 5.02.3. The source distribution is freely available via the World-Wide Web, under a BSD-style license. See below for download details. Pre-built packages for Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Win32 are also available (or will appear shortly). Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998. GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell. Included is an optimising compiler generating good 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 (C, C++, whatever). 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 at http://www.haskell.org/ GHC's Web page lives at http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ What's new in 5.02.3 ====================== Some important bugfixes: - now works with gcc 3.x - works with newer glibc releases on Linux - loading parsers generated by Happy with the -ag flags into GHCi now works - fix for excessive recompilation when using --make - tryTakeMVar now works - fix some problems with the dynamic linker when loading C libraries into GHCi (using Gtk+HS from GHCi should now work). and various other minor fixes. NOTE: object files created by this vesrion of GHC may be incompatible with object files created by older versions of GHC, so be sure to recompile any pre-compiled libraries you may have lying around. How to get it =============== The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be self-explanatory: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ We supply binary builds in the native package format for various flavours of Linux and BSD, and in InstallShield form for Windows folks. Everybody else gets a .tar.gz which can be installed where you want. Once you have the distribution, please follow the pointers in the README file to find all of the documentation about this release. On-line GHC-related resources =============================== Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web: GHC home page http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ Haskell home page http://www.haskell.org/ comp.lang.functional FAQ http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/faq.html System requirements ===================== To compile programs with GHC, you need a machine with 64+MB memory, GNU C and perl. This release is known to work on the following platforms: * i386-unknown-{linux,freebsd,mingw32} * sparc-sun-solaris2 * alpha-dec-osf3 Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy (for a wunderhacker), but haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware: * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10} * i386-unknown-solaris2 * mips-sgi-irix{5,6} * {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix The builder's guide included in distribution gives a complete run-down of what ports work; an on-line version can be found at http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/building/building-guide.html Mailing lists =============== We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use the web interfaces at http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on www.haskell.org; for the full list, see http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ Please report bugs using our SourceForge page at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghc/ or send them to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org. GHC users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org. Bleeding edge CVS users party on cvs-ghc@haskell.org.