[ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.4.1-alpha2 available

[Ben Gamari]

The GHC development team is pleased to announce the second alpha release
of the 8.4.1 release. The usual release artifacts are available from

    https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.4.1-alpha2

Note that this alpha, like alpha1, is unfortunately afflicted by #14678.
We will try to get an alpha3 out as soon as this issue has been resolved.
However, as this alpha has a number of fixes since alpha1, we have
decided it would be best not to delay it any further.

Also, due to user demand we now offer a binary distribution for 64-bit
Fedora 27; this distribution links against ncurses6. This is in contrast
to the Debian 8 distribution, which links against ncurses5. Users of
newer distributions (Fedora 27, Debian sid) should use this distribution.

Note that this release drops compatibility with GCC 4.6 and earlier.
While we generally try to place as few constraints on system toolchain
as possible, this release depends upon the __atomic__ builtins provided
by GCC 4.7 and later (see #14244).


=== Notes on release scheduling ===

The 8.4.1 release marks the first release where GHC will be adhering to
its new, higher-cadence release schedule [1]. Under this new scheme,
major releases will be made in 6-month intervals with interstitial minor
releases as necessary.

In order to minimize the likelihood of schedule slippage and to ensure
adequate testing, each major release will be preceeded by a number of
regular alpha releases. We will begin issuing these releases roughly
three months before the final date of the major release and will issue
roughly one every two weeks during this period. This high release
cadence will allow us to quickly get fixes in to users hands and allow
better feedback on the status of the release.

GHC 8.4 is slated to be released in mid-February but, due to technical
constraints, we are starting the alpha-release cycle a bit later than
planned under the above schedule. For this reason, it would be greatly
appreciated if users could put this alpha through its paces to make up
for lost time.

As always, do let us know if you encounter any trouble in the course of
testing. Thanks for your help!

Cheers,

- Ben


[1] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/2017-release-schedule
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