GHC 5.02.1 is available. Currently the source, x86-linux and sparc-solaris tarballs are available. We hope to add binary builds for Win32 and Alpha early next week. -- J The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 5.02.1 ============================================================== We are pleased to announce a new patchlevel release of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC), version 5.02.1. 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. 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 5.02.1 ====================== Fixed various bugs, some of which caused GHCi to crash or misbehave. Some documentation fixes. Nothing major. What's new in 5.02 ==================== 5.02 incorporates many small refinements and bug fixes over the previous stable release (5.00.2). There are no major changes. - Much improved support for Windows platforms. Binary builds are now entirely freestanding. There's no need to install Cygwin or Mingwin to use it. It's a one-click-install-and-off-you-go story now. - Several small changes to bring GHC into line with the newest Haskell 98 report. - GHCi (the interactive system) now works on Windows. - Partial FFI support in GHCi. At the moment, foreign import (both static and dynamic) is supported on x86 and sparc platforms. - A compacting garbage collector, to try and reduce space use. - Experimental: partial support for hierarchical module names. - Experimental: following heroic hacking by Ken Shan, 5.02 now works on Alpha (Tru64 only). Many 64-bit bugs have been shaken out. At the moment only the batch-mode compiler works -- no GHCi or native code generator yet. We've found and fixed more bugs than you could possibly imagine. A big thank-you to all those who reported bugs in the 5.00.X series. We claim to have fixed almost all reported bugs. In general we've spent a large amount of effort trying to improve the stability of the system relative to 5.00.X. (Famous last words ...) For full details see the release notes: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/5.02/set/release-5-02.html 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/5.02/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.