[GHC DevOps Group] GHC 8.4.3 release, and release policies?

[Ben Gamari]

Gershom B <gershomb at gmail.com> writes:

> I believe this list/group is intended to help set GHC release policies
> and plan when releases occur.
>
> I'd like to draw people's attention to
> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/15068
>
> I think that the "nay" side has the right of it.
>
> 1) To summarize my understanding: there is an issue with upstream gnu
> binutils that are included in Ubuntu 18.04 and is triggered by GHC
> _only_ when the -g flag for debug symbol output is passed. This bug is
> triggered by GHCs going back through the 8.2 series. Note that 18.04
> was released _after_ ghc 8.4.2.
>
> There is a patch to GHC to work around this issue, that also
> incidentally improves another possible issue with debug symbol
> emitting.
>
> Normally the -g flag is relatively rarely used, and by those who would
> be able to work around such things. However, stack runs with -g by
> default, unless users explicitly compile with symbol stripping turned
> on.
>
> The proposed solution is an 8.4.3 release of GHC with _just_ this patch.
>
I agree that a single-patch release is both unnecessary and would set very
poor precedent.
However, I intended to suggest that 8.4.3 would be a full (albeit fairly
small) release. There are currently a few other patches in the merge
queue including fixes for #15038, #15006, and #15145. It would also be
nice to finalize and merge a fix for #14381 as I have noticed a number
of people commenting on being bitten by it.

Cheers,

- Ben
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