The GHC developers are very pleased to announce the availability of the second alpha release of GHC 9.12.1. Binary distributions, source distributions, and documentation are available at [downloads.haskell.org][]. We hope to have this release available via ghcup shortly. GHC 9.12 will bring a number of new features and improvements, including: * The new language extension [OrPatterns] allowing you to combine multiple pattern clauses into one. * The [MultilineStrings] language extension to allow you to more easily write strings spanning multiple lines in your source code. * Improvements to the OverloadedRecordDot extension, allowing the built-in `HasField` class to be used for records with fields of non lifted representations. * The [NamedDefaults] language extension has been introduced allowing you to define defaults for typeclasses other than `Num`. * More deterministic object code output, controlled by the `-fobject-determinism` flag, which improves determinism of builds a lot (though does not fully do so) at the cost of some compiler performance (1-2%). See #12935 for the details * GHC now accepts type syntax in expressions as part of [GHC Proposal #281]. * The WASM backend now has support for TemplateHaskell. * ... and many more A full accounting of changes can be found in the [release notes][]. As always, GHC's release status, including planned future releases, can be found on the GHC Wiki [status][]. We would like to thank GitHub, IOG, the Zw3rk stake pool, Well-Typed, Tweag I/O, Serokell, Equinix, SimSpace, the Haskell Foundation, and other anonymous contributors whose on-going financial and in-kind support has facilitated GHC maintenance and release management over the years. Finally, this release would not have been possible without the hundreds of open-source contributors whose work comprise this release. As always, do give this release a try and open a [ticket][] if you see anything amiss. [release notes]: https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.12.1-alpha2/docs/users_guide/9.12.1-note... [status]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/GHC-status [downloads.haskell.org]: https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.12.1-alpha2 [ticket]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/new [OrPatterns]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0522-or... [MultilineStrings]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0569-mu... [GHC Proposal #281]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0281-vi... [NamedDefaults]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0409-ex... Cheers, Zubin