[ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.4.1-alpha1 available

The GHC development team is pleased to announce the first alpha release of the 8.4.1 release. The usual release artifacts are available from https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.1-alpha1 Note that this release drops compatibility with GCC 4.6 and earlier. While we generally try to place as few constraints on system toolchain as possible, this release depends upon the __atomic__ builtins provided by GCC 4.7 and later (see #14244). === Notes on release scheduling === The 8.4.1 release marks the first release where GHC will be adhering to its new, higher-cadence release schedule [1]. Under this new scheme, major releases will be made in 6-month intervals with interstitial minor releases as necessary. In order to minimize the likelihood of schedule slippage and to ensure adequate testing, each major release will be preceeded by a number of regular alpha releases. We will begin issuing these releases roughly three months before the final date of the major release and will issue roughly one every two weeks during this period. This high release cadence will allow us to quickly get fixes in to users hands and allow better feedback on the status of the release. GHC 8.4 is slated to be released in mid-February but, due to technical constraints, we are starting the alpha-release cycle a bit later than planned under the above schedule. For this reason, it would be greatly appreciated if users could put this alpha through its paces to make up for lost time. As always, do let us know if you encounter any trouble in the course of testing. Thanks for your help! Cheers, - Ben [1] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/2017-release-schedule

Thanks Ben. I installed the Mac binaries.
For others who are wondering, you need llvm 5 if you want to use llvm with
this.
Needless to say, many libraries, e.g. haskell-src-exts, primitive, and
intero won't compile with this even with --allow-newer
I'll notify those libraries about that in case they want to get started on
8.4.1
Cheers
George
On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 4:48 PM Ben Gamari
The GHC development team is pleased to announce the first alpha release of the 8.4.1 release. The usual release artifacts are available from
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.1-alpha1
Note that this release drops compatibility with GCC 4.6 and earlier. While we generally try to place as few constraints on system toolchain as possible, this release depends upon the __atomic__ builtins provided by GCC 4.7 and later (see #14244).
=== Notes on release scheduling ===
The 8.4.1 release marks the first release where GHC will be adhering to its new, higher-cadence release schedule [1]. Under this new scheme, major releases will be made in 6-month intervals with interstitial minor releases as necessary.
In order to minimize the likelihood of schedule slippage and to ensure adequate testing, each major release will be preceeded by a number of regular alpha releases. We will begin issuing these releases roughly three months before the final date of the major release and will issue roughly one every two weeks during this period. This high release cadence will allow us to quickly get fixes in to users hands and allow better feedback on the status of the release.
GHC 8.4 is slated to be released in mid-February but, due to technical constraints, we are starting the alpha-release cycle a bit later than planned under the above schedule. For this reason, it would be greatly appreciated if users could put this alpha through its paces to make up for lost time.
As always, do let us know if you encounter any trouble in the course of testing. Thanks for your help!
Cheers,
- Ben
[1] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/2017-release-schedule _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users

Probably stating what is obvious and well-know but anyways:
- On the status page
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Status/GHC-8.4.1 it would be
good to have a link for "Phase 2 of the Semigroup-Monoid Proposal (Herbert
Riedel)"
- Also IIRC we normally have a page on porting to the new release. It
would be good to have that also when we have a chance.
It's great that we are getting started early.
On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 4:16 PM George Colpitts
Thanks Ben. I installed the Mac binaries.
For others who are wondering, you need llvm 5 if you want to use llvm with this.
Needless to say, many libraries, e.g. haskell-src-exts, primitive, and intero won't compile with this even with --allow-newer
I'll notify those libraries about that in case they want to get started on 8.4.1
Cheers George
On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 4:48 PM Ben Gamari
wrote: The GHC development team is pleased to announce the first alpha release of the 8.4.1 release. The usual release artifacts are available from
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.1-alpha1
Note that this release drops compatibility with GCC 4.6 and earlier. While we generally try to place as few constraints on system toolchain as possible, this release depends upon the __atomic__ builtins provided by GCC 4.7 and later (see #14244).
=== Notes on release scheduling ===
The 8.4.1 release marks the first release where GHC will be adhering to its new, higher-cadence release schedule [1]. Under this new scheme, major releases will be made in 6-month intervals with interstitial minor releases as necessary.
In order to minimize the likelihood of schedule slippage and to ensure adequate testing, each major release will be preceeded by a number of regular alpha releases. We will begin issuing these releases roughly three months before the final date of the major release and will issue roughly one every two weeks during this period. This high release cadence will allow us to quickly get fixes in to users hands and allow better feedback on the status of the release.
GHC 8.4 is slated to be released in mid-February but, due to technical constraints, we are starting the alpha-release cycle a bit later than planned under the above schedule. For this reason, it would be greatly appreciated if users could put this alpha through its paces to make up for lost time.
As always, do let us know if you encounter any trouble in the course of testing. Thanks for your help!
Cheers,
- Ben
[1] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/2017-release-schedule _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users

George Colpitts
Probably stating what is obvious and well-know but anyways:
- On the status page https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Status/GHC-8.4.1 it would be good to have a link for "Phase 2 of the Semigroup-Monoid Proposal (Herbert Riedel)"
Good catch. I've added a link.
- Also IIRC we normally have a page on porting to the new release. It would be good to have that also when we have a chance.
Indeed, the migration page can be found here: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Migration/8.4. I've added a link to the 8.4 status page. Cheers, - Ben

Hi Ben, Are there any plans to start releasing Linux bindists linked with libncurses.so.6? A number of Linux distributions have upgraded from 5, including Fedora, Arch and Gentoo, and the currently available official bindists don't work out of the box on those anymore. -- Manny

Emanuel Borsboom
Hi Ben,
Are there any plans to start releasing Linux bindists linked with libncurses.so.6? A number of Linux distributions have upgraded from 5, including Fedora, Arch and Gentoo, and the currently available official bindists don't work out of the box on those anymore.
Indeed I can add an ncurses.so.6 platform to the build matrix. I'll start with the next alpha. Thanks for mentioning this! Cheers, - Ben

The GHC development team is pleased to announce the second alpha release of the 8.4.1 release. The usual release artifacts are available from https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.1-alpha2 Note that this alpha, like alpha1, is unfortunately afflicted by #14678. We will try to get an alpha3 out as soon as this issue has been resolved. However, as this alpha has a number of fixes since alpha1, we have decided it would be best not to delay it any further. Also, due to user demand we now offer a binary distribution for 64-bit Fedora 27; this distribution links against ncurses6. This is in contrast to the Debian 8 distribution, which links against ncurses5. Users of newer distributions (Fedora 27, Debian sid) should use this distribution. Note that this release drops compatibility with GCC 4.6 and earlier. While we generally try to place as few constraints on system toolchain as possible, this release depends upon the __atomic__ builtins provided by GCC 4.7 and later (see #14244). === Notes on release scheduling === The 8.4.1 release marks the first release where GHC will be adhering to its new, higher-cadence release schedule [1]. Under this new scheme, major releases will be made in 6-month intervals with interstitial minor releases as necessary. In order to minimize the likelihood of schedule slippage and to ensure adequate testing, each major release will be preceeded by a number of regular alpha releases. We will begin issuing these releases roughly three months before the final date of the major release and will issue roughly one every two weeks during this period. This high release cadence will allow us to quickly get fixes in to users hands and allow better feedback on the status of the release. GHC 8.4 is slated to be released in mid-February but, due to technical constraints, we are starting the alpha-release cycle a bit later than planned under the above schedule. For this reason, it would be greatly appreciated if users could put this alpha through its paces to make up for lost time. As always, do let us know if you encounter any trouble in the course of testing. Thanks for your help! Cheers, - Ben [1] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/2017-release-schedule

installed fine on my mac
primitive can now be compiled
unordered-containers does not compile, even with allow-new. This has been
reported by Neil Mitchell
haskell-src-exts does not compile, not clear where to report this
On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 4:15 PM Ben Gamari
The GHC development team is pleased to announce the second alpha release of the 8.4.1 release. The usual release artifacts are available from
https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.1-alpha2
Note that this alpha, like alpha1, is unfortunately afflicted by #14678. We will try to get an alpha3 out as soon as this issue has been resolved. However, as this alpha has a number of fixes since alpha1, we have decided it would be best not to delay it any further.
Also, due to user demand we now offer a binary distribution for 64-bit Fedora 27; this distribution links against ncurses6. This is in contrast to the Debian 8 distribution, which links against ncurses5. Users of newer distributions (Fedora 27, Debian sid) should use this distribution.
Note that this release drops compatibility with GCC 4.6 and earlier. While we generally try to place as few constraints on system toolchain as possible, this release depends upon the __atomic__ builtins provided by GCC 4.7 and later (see #14244).
=== Notes on release scheduling ===
The 8.4.1 release marks the first release where GHC will be adhering to its new, higher-cadence release schedule [1]. Under this new scheme, major releases will be made in 6-month intervals with interstitial minor releases as necessary.
In order to minimize the likelihood of schedule slippage and to ensure adequate testing, each major release will be preceeded by a number of regular alpha releases. We will begin issuing these releases roughly three months before the final date of the major release and will issue roughly one every two weeks during this period. This high release cadence will allow us to quickly get fixes in to users hands and allow better feedback on the status of the release.
GHC 8.4 is slated to be released in mid-February but, due to technical constraints, we are starting the alpha-release cycle a bit later than planned under the above schedule. For this reason, it would be greatly appreciated if users could put this alpha through its paces to make up for lost time.
As always, do let us know if you encounter any trouble in the course of testing. Thanks for your help!
Cheers,
- Ben
[1] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/2017-release-schedule _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
participants (3)
-
Ben Gamari
-
Emanuel Borsboom
-
George Colpitts