Dear GHC developers, I wonder: why do not you use the DoCon program as the test? For many years, an attempt to build DoCon according to install.txt and to run its test .../demotest/T_ reveals on average a couple of serious bugs in a new GHC version. One does not need to study anything: only download the archive and follow install.txt. Anyway, if the test function crashes, then it, probably, does not worth to release a public version until the bug is fixed -- ? After the release is done public, the users will still find further bugs, but this is a regular process. Though the test is not done specially for debugging GHC, it proves useful for this. It runs first certain simple functionality, then proceeds with more complex. It also prints True, True ..., and where it prints first False or where it crashes, it follows then that the bug had occured before. Generally, the situation is as follows. * docon-2.06 is public, it is for old ghc, maybe, ghc-5.04. * docon-2.07 is used privately, it is intermediate, it runs on ghc-5.04 and does not reveal any serious bug. * docon-2.08 is ready to become public, it is for ghc >= 6.0.1, but needs a reliable ghc release. * As to the implemented computer algebra methods themself, there is no serious progress from docon-2.06. But the porting is good, because a) it is useful for the GHC debugging, b) DoCon has 1-2 users, now and then other people threaten to use it, and this alarms me, c) the last GHC release is always most supported, and often DoCon cannot install for new release without some changes, usually, `system', cosmetic ones. * Sometimes I drop upgrading DoCon to new GHC for an year or two, and this leads to extra unfixed bugs in GHC. * Recently I try a project of CA + Prover based on Term Rewriting and so far implement half of it in Haskell. I tried many scientific programming tools in my life and do not fear any of looking into new ones, but (Glasgow) Haskell occurs hard to quit with. With kind regards, ----------------- Serge Mechveliani mechvel@botik.ru