[ANNOUNCE] Glasgow Haskell Compiler 9.0.1-alpha1 released

[Cheng Shao]

Hi Ben,

> We will likely transition the Alpine binary distribution to be fully
   statically-linked, providing a convenient, distribution-independent
   packaging option for Linux users.

iirc for statically linked executables, musl doesn't even support
dlopen, so wouldn't this mean such a bindist would fail for all
LoadDLL ghci commands?

Cheers,
Cheng

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 9:15 PM Ben Gamari <ben at well-typed.com> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> The GHC team is very pleased to announce the availability of the first
> alpha release in the GHC 9.0 series. Source and binary distributions are
> available at the usual place:
>
>     https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.0.1-alpha1/
>
> This first alpha comes quite a bit later than expected. However, we have
> done a significant amount of testing on this pre-release and therefore
> hope to be able to move forward quickly with a release candidate next
> week and with a final release in mid-October.
>
> GHC 9.0.1 will bring a number of new features:
>
>  * A first cut of the new LinearTypes language extension [1], allowing
>    use of linear function syntax and linear record fields.
>
>  * A new bignum library (ghc-bignum), allowing GHC to be more easily
>    used with integer libraries other than GMP.
>
>  * Improvements in code generation, resulting in considerable
>    performance improvements in some programs.
>
>  * Improvements in pattern-match checking, allowing more precise
>    detection of redundant cases and reduced compilation time.
>
>  * Implementation of the "simplified subsumption" proposal [2]
>    simplifying the type system and paving the way for QuickLook
>    impredicativity in GHC 9.2.
>
>  * Implementation of the QualifiedDo extension [3], allowing more
>    convenient overloading of `do` syntax.
>
>  * Improvements in compilation time.
>
> And many more. See the release notes [4] for a full accounting of the
> changes in this release.
>
> Do note that there are a few things that we expect will change before
> the final release:
>
>  * We expect to sort out a notarization workflow for Apple Darwin,
>    allowing our binary distributions to be used on macOS Catalina
>    without hassle.
>
>    Until this has been sorted out Catalina users can exempt the
>    current macOS binary distribution from the notarization requirement
>    themselves by running `xattr -cr .` on the unpacked tree before
>    running `make install`.
>
>  * We will likely transition the Alpine binary distribution to be fully
>    statically-linked, providing a convenient, distribution-independent
>    packaging option for Linux users.
>
>  * We will be merging a robust solution for #17760 which will introduce
>    a new primitive, `keepAlive#`, to the `base` library, subsuming
>    most uses of `touch#`.
>
> As always, do test this release and open tickets for whatever issues you
> encounter. To help with this, we will be publishing a blog post
> describing use of our new `head.hackage` infrastructure to ease testing
> of larger projects with Hackage dependencies later this week.
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Ben
>
>
> [1] https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0111-linear-types.rst
> [2] https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0287-simplify-subsumption.rst
> [3] https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0216-qualified-do.rst
> [4] https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.0.1-alpha1/docs/html/users_guide/9.0.1-notes.html
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