9.4 release planning (& GHCJS merge process)

[Hécate]

Hi Matthew, thank you for this update and the other one regarding your team.

I have multiple questions regarding the release:

1. Could a migration guide be provided? Or better, a script/tool? From 
what I understand, going from 9.2 to 9.4 means breaking changes have 
been introduced.

2. The 8.10 series has gained a status of LTS amongst industrial users, 
thanks to both the numerous backports but also the wider support in the 
ecosystem. Could you please clarify whether or not it will still be an 
LTS after this release, and the status of 9.0 and 9.2 (which have 
brought numerous new things themselves but seem to have been quickly 
replaced by the next release each time). It's quite confusing, and when 
the question arises in professional circles, a (seemingly) valid answer 
that is brought up is "We can wait 6 more months and have a breaking 
release that will force us to migrate painfully, let's not move yet".

3. From what I can see in the "Likely highlights" (this phrasing is 
unclear to me, you don't expect some of those changes to make it to the 
release?), it is mostly an engineering release (which is great). Do you 
think that the 9.4 series could benefit from the same longevity as the 
8.10 did and take its place as a continuously-improved version while 
Language / R&D versions of GHC are published anew?

4. There was a talk of slowing the release schedule to once a year, and 
last I heard, Ben was sympathetic to it. Could you express the official 
position of your team on the matter?

Again, I'd like to echo Richard's words in the other thread, thank you 
and your team for all this work, this is immensely appreciated.

Cheers,
Hécate

Le 22/02/2022 à 18:14, Matthew Pickering a écrit :
> Hi all,
>
> Firstly we are anticipating branching 9.4 in about 6 weeks time
> (approx start of April). Most of the major features originally
> milestoned[1] for this release have landed and the main branch is
> currently in a nice state. This timeline will be solidified once the
> 9.2.2 release has been completed.
>
> The major outstanding work that I am aware of is
>
> Windows toolchain work (#21019) (Ben Gamari)
> Partial Register Stall (#20405) (Andreas Klebinger)
> hi-haddock (!6224) (Zubin Duggal / Matthew Pickering )
> Directed Coercions (!6476) (Sam Derbyshire)
>
> Secondly, we are anticipating adding a javascript backend inspired by
> GHCJS as the highlight of the 9.6 release. This work is led by the
> team at IOHK.
>
> * The planning and progress of this process is tracked on this wiki
> page - https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/javascript-backend
> * We anticipate reviewing and merging patches incrementally into a
> feature branch until the point where test coverage is suitable and the
> patches can be merged into the main branch.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Matt
>
>
> [1]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/milestones/370
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