[ANNOUNCE] GHC 9.10.1-alpha1 is now available

[Ben Gamari]

The GHC developers are very pleased to announce the availability
of the first alpha release of GHC 9.10.1. Binary distributions, source
distributions, and documentation are available at

            https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.10.1-alpha1

We hope to have this release available via ghcup shortly.

GHC 9.10 will bring a number of new features and improvements, including:

 * The introduction of the GHC2024 language edition, building upon
   GHC2021 with the addition of a number of widely-used extensions.

 * Partial implementation of the [GHC Proposal #281], allowing visible
   quantification to be used in the types of terms.

 * Extension of LinearTypes to allow linear `let` and `where` bindings
   ([linear-let])

 * The implementation of the exception backtrace proposal, allowing
   the annotation of exceptions with backtraces, as well as other
   user-defined context [exception backtrace]

 * Further improvements in the info table provenance mechanism, reducing
   code size to allow IPE information to be enabled more widely

 * Javascript FFI support in the WebAssembly backend

 * Improvements in the fragmentation characteristics of the low-latency
   non-moving garbage collector.

 * ... 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].

Many will notice that this release comes a fair bit later than the
previously-announced schedule. While this delay has been attributable to
a variety factors, the most recent cause is a set of issues with GHC
9.10's binary distributions on Windows (#24542). Instead of continuing
to hold up the release process while we sort out this situation, we have
instead provided this alpha without the usual assortment of Windows
binary distributions. We expect to have this resolved by alpha 2;
apologies to eager Windows testers for this delay.

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.

Happy compiling,

~ Ben


[release notes]: https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.10.1-alpha1/docs/users_guide/9.10.1-notes.html
[status]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/GHC-status
[exception backtrace]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/330
[GHC Proposal #281]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/281
[linear let]: https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/624
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