The GHC team is very pleased to announce the availability of the first (and likely final) release candidate of GHC 9.6.1. As usual, binaries and source distributions are available at [downloads.haskell.org](https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.6.1-rc1/). Beginning with GHC 9.6.1, GHC can be built as a cross-compiler to WebAssembly and JavaScript. This is an important step towards robust support for compiling Haskell to the Web, but there are a few caveats to be aware of in the 9.6 series: - Both the Javascript and WebAssembly backends are still at an early stage of development and are present in this release as a technology preview - Using GHC as a cross-compiler is not as easy as we would like it to be; in particular, there are challenges related to Template Haskell - GHC is not yet run-time retargetable; a given GHC binary targets exactly one platform, and both WebAssembly and JavaScript are considered platforms for this purpose. Cross-compilers must be built from source by their users We hope to lift all of these limitations in future releases. Additionally, 9.6.1 will include: - Significant latency improvements in the non-moving garbage collector - Efficient runtime support for delimited continuations - Improvements in compiler error messages - Numerous improvements in the compiler's memory usage See the [release notes][] for a comprehensive accounting of changes in this release. As always, one can find a migration guide to aid in transitioning from older releases on the [GHC Wiki][migration-guide]. We have also recently started extending our release process to cover a wider set of Linux distributions. In particular, we now offer Rocky 8 and Ubuntu 20.04 binary distributions which cover RedHat-derivative and distributions using older `glibc` releases (namely 2.27), respectively. Please do give this release a try and open a [ticket][] if you see anything amiss. If all goes well we expect the final release should be available by late next week. Happy Haskelling, ~ Ben [ticket]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/issues/ [migration-guide]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/migration/9.6 [release notes]: https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.6.1-rc1/docs/users_guide/9.6.1-notes.htm...