Even I find it hard to believe that it's finally here!

I'm happy to announce the RC1 release of Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0.

You can find builds for Windows (32bit and 64bit), Mac (64bit), as well as a source tarball, and a tag in the repo:

Notes:

General

Built with the new shake based build system
cgi package not included as it doesn't build under 7.8, and no word from the maintainer in quite some time
hscolour is included as a tool, mostly as it is used to build the platform itself on win and mac... but we should probably officially decide to include it
the haskell-platform package itself is not in these releases... not sure if we actually need it as it doesn't contain anything other than dependencies.

Windows

The Haskell Platform now provides a native Windows 64-bit installation (haskell-platform issue #54)
All included packages built without --enable-split-objs (GHC 7.8 FAQ)
All included packages built without --enable-shared (GHC ticket #8228)
All html document links are relative and everything links nicely together now, including the master index and cross-package links
If other Haskell Platform installations are detected during the installation of Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0, a warning is displayed to the user that this is not recommended since problems will arise due to how the PATH is used in many cases to find ancillary build tools
Using ghci to build an executable that links against a DLL may result in numerous warnings about symbols (GHC ticket #9297)
On Windows 64-bit, some unneeded python files are included (GHC ticket #9014)
The Haskell Platform for Windows, both 32-bit and 64-bit, now includes an updated version of the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) from the FreeGLUT project, utilizing the pre-built distribution fromhttp://www.transmissionzero.co.uk/software/freeglut-devel/ with the MinGW build (freeglut-MinGW-2.8.1-1.mp.zip). (haskell-platform issue #81)

Mac OS X

Distributed with a build of 7.8.3 that differs from the released bindist in two ways: a) it was built split-objs for smaller resulting executables, b) it includes Cabal-1.18.1.4 which fixes a particularly nasty problem with haddock, -XCPP, and clang based systems. This ghc-7.8.3 bindist is available as well:

haddocks finally cross link between packages correctly
includes a new experimental activate-hs command that can switch between multiple installed versions of the platform
includes a slightly updated uninstall-hs command
the cabal command is wrapped to provide a smoother file layout on the Mac... the wrapping only updates the ~/.cabal/config file the first time you run it.. please pay attention to its output - if you have a custom config file, you'll want to update it, as Cabal's defaults have changed
works on 10.7 (tested), 10.8 (assumed!), 10.9 (tested) - both with gcc and clang based Xcode installs. (Next RC will support back to 10.6!)
64bit only build this time... anyone still want the 32bit build?

Source tarball

Quite some changes from last time - notably now includes the new build machinery, not the old.
The build machinery is well tested (see the travis-ci link above) from a repo... not tested much from a source repo
It isn't clear the source repo is of much interest... anyone need it? anyone need anything beyond the haskell-platform.cabal file in it?

Timetable

These can "soak" amongst the intreped on these lists for 48 hours.
On Saturday, I'll release any needed updated RCs, and announce to a wider audience
End of next week (from my vacation, I'll point out), we'll declare success and ship.

— Mark

P.S.: sha256 sums for the reasonably wary:

860cba2d65bc1790ec3b8a0a62c8aaf19f5b18e9070aa1ec3c468b7c6ca82697 Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0 64bit RC1.signed.pkg

8ca8a994334bf846ac6a41ada381c51634b2fce0d68dc70b2dadf59cb8748397 haskell-platform-2014.2.0.0-RC1.tar.gz

b034e2daa595e0d3827860b062afca05f62df64434b0923559acc99bd82ef1e9 HaskellPlatform-2014.2.0.0-i386-RC1-setup.exe

e31fe5e0cb9dca330e6f0c62ac49bf70b79f555bfe11e8f04c47739fef224145 HaskellPlatform-2014.2.0.0-x86_64-RC1-setup.exe

8e479d9dd504b1c603cd51f3be0fa57ecdc996e842d655e39d97faafff3c2d31 ghc-7.8.3-x86_64-apple-darwin-r3.tar.bz2