[ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.6.1 released

[Jens Petersen]

I have built 8.6.1 for Fedora 27, 28, 29, Rawhide, and EPEL7 in:

https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/petersen/ghc-8.6.1/

The repo also includes latest cabal-install.

Thanks for the release!
Jens
On Sat, 22 Sep 2018 at 09:58, Ben Gamari <ben at well-typed.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> The GHC team is pleased to announce the availability of GHC 8.6.1, the
> fourth major release in the GHC 8 series. The source distribution, binary
> distributions, and documentation for this release are available at
>
>     https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1
>
> The 8.6 release fixes over 400 bugs from the 8.4 series and introduces a
> number of exciting features. These most notably include:
>
>  * A new deriving mechanism, `deriving via`, providing a convenient way
>    for users to extend Haskell's typeclass deriving mechanism
>
>  * Quantified constraints, allowing forall quantification in constraint contexts
>
>  * An early version of the GHCi `:doc` command
>
>  * The `ghc-heap-view` package, allowing introspection into the
>    structure of GHC's heap
>
>  * Valid hole fit hints, helping the user to find terms to fill typed
>    holes in their programs
>
>  * The BlockArguments extension, allowing the `$` operator to be omitted
>    in some unambiguous contexts
>
>  * An exciting new plugin mechanism, source plugins, allowing plugins to
>    inspect and modify a wide variety of compiler representations.
>
>  * Improved recompilation checking when plugins are used
>
>  * Significantly better handling of macOS linker command size limits,
>    avoiding linker errors while linking large projects
>
>  * The next phase of the MonadFail proposal, enabling
>    -XMonadFailDesugaring by default
>
> A full list of the changes in this release can be found in the
> release notes:
>
>     https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.6.1/docs/html/users_guide/8.6.1-notes.html
>
> Perhaps of equal importance, GHC 8.6 is the second major release made
> under GHC's accelerated six-month release schedule and the first set of
> binary distributions built primarily using our new continuous
> integration scheme. While the final 8.6 release is around three weeks
> later than initially scheduled due to late-breaking bug reports, we
> expect that the 8.8 release schedule shouldn't be affected.
>
> Thanks to everyone who has contributed to developing, documenting, and
> testing this release!
>
> As always, let us know if you encounter trouble.
>
>
> 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 efficient 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. 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              https://www.haskell.org/ghc/
> GHC developers' home page  https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/
> Haskell home page          https://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/Contributors
>
> 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
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>
>     https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
>     https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-tickets
>
> There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on
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>
>     https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo
>
> Some GHC developers hang out on #haskell on IRC, too:
>
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>
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>
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