ANNOUNCE: GHC version 7.10.1

[Austin Seipp]

==============================================================
    The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 7.10.1
==============================================================

The GHC Team is pleased to announce a new major release of GHC. There
have been a number of significant changes since the last major
release, including:

  * Several new language features and changes have been implemented:
    - Applicative is now a superclass of Monad and in the Prelude.

    - Many prelude combinators have been generalized

    - Static pointers

  * GHC now has preliminary and experimental support for DWARF based debugging.

  * `integer-gmp` has been completely rewritten.

  * Type-checking plugins can now extend the type checker.

  * Support for partial type signatures

  * Many bugfixes and other performance improvements.

  * Preliminary support for 'backpack' features like signatures.

  * Typeable is now generated by default for all data types automatically.

We've also fixed a handful of issues reported since RC3:

  - A bug in the call arity analysis that would result in invalid core
was fixed (#10176)
  - A bug in the Win32 package causing it to fail to load was fixed (#10165)
  - ghc-prim has (correctly) been bumped to version 0.4.0.0, to comply
with the PVP.
  - Several libraries have been bumped to their latest available
versions after coordination.

The full release notes are here:

https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/7.10.1/docs/html/users_guide/release-7-10-1.html


How to get it
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The easy way is to go to the web page, which should be self-explanatory:

        https://www.haskell.org/ghc/

We supply binary builds in the native package format for many
platforms, and the source distribution is available from the same
place.

Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your
system isn't available yet, please try again later.


Background
~~~~~~~~~~

Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language.

GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell.  Included is
an optimising compiler generating good code for a variety of
platforms, together with an interactive system for convenient, quick
development. The distribution includes space and time profiling
facilities, a large collection of libraries, and support for various
language extensions, including concurrency, exceptions, and foreign
language interfaces (C, whatever). GHC is distributed under a
BSD-style open source license.

A wide variety of Haskell related resources (tutorials, libraries,
specifications, documentation, compilers, interpreters, references,
contact information, links to research groups) are available from the
Haskell home page (see below).


On-line GHC-related resources
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:

GHC home page              http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
GHC developers' home page  http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/
Haskell home page          http://www.haskell.org/


Supported Platforms
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The list of platforms we support, and the people responsible for them,
is here:

   https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Platforms
   https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/CodeOwners

Ports to other platforms are possible with varying degrees of
difficulty.  The Building Guide describes how to go about porting to a
new platform:

    https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building


Developers
~~~~~~~~~~

We welcome new contributors.  Instructions on accessing our source
code repository, and getting started with hacking on GHC, are
available from the GHC's developer's site run by Trac:

  https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/


Mailing lists
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use
the web interfaces at

    https://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
    https://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs

There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on
www.haskell.org; for the full list, see

    https://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/

Some GHC developers hang out on #haskell on IRC, too:

    https://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel

Please report bugs using our bug tracking system.  Instructions on
reporting bugs can be found here:

    https://www.haskell.org/ghc/reportabug


Hashes & Signatures
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/7.10.1/ you will find a signed
copy of the SHA256 hashes for the tarballs, using my GPG key (0F8F
3AA9 9235 C704 ADA0  B419 B942 AEE5 3B58 D86F).

-- 
Regards,

Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/