ANNOUNCE: GHC 5.03.20020204 snapshot release

[Sigbjorn Finne]

A Windows Installer for this snapshot is now available via
the GHC downloads page,

    http://haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_snapshot.html

enjoy
--sof

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Julian Seward (Intl Vendor)" <v-julsew@microsoft.com>
To: <haskell@haskell.org>; <glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 06:36
Subject: ANNOUNCE: GHC 5.03.20020204 snapshot release


> 
> There have been a number of significant improvements made to GHC 
> since the 5.02 sources were branched off the main GHC development 
> tree, but we're not quite ready to make a full 5.04 release yet.  
> However, we're keen to get feedback on the new features from people
> that don't have easy access to CVS or don't have the time & patience
> to build GHC from scratch, so we're making a snapshot release of the
> current GHC, in source and binary form.
> 
> There are NO GUARANTEES as to the stability of this release, although
> we do know it has passed our basic three-stage bootstrap test and run
> the regression tests successfully.  In some cases the documentation
> hasn't been fully updated to reflect the new features yet.
> 
> Briefly, the changes relative to 5.02.2 are:
> 
>    - The type system now supports arbitrary rank polymorphism,
>      given appropriate type annotations.
> 
>    - Heap profiling has had a major overhaul and now supports
>      retainer profiling and biographical profiling ala nhc98.
> 
>    - Major improvements to the native code generators. You can now 
>      compile any and all code through them, including the Prelude. 
> 
>    - The FFI syntax has been updated to match the latest version
>      of the FFI Haskell 98 Addendum.
> 
>    - newtypes support deriving *any* class for which the
>      underlying type is also an instance.
> 
>    - Linear implicit parameters: a highly experimental feature.
> 
>    - GHCi has several new commands: 
> - ':show bindings' to list the bindings made on the command
>   line,
> - ':show modules' to show which modules are loaded,
> - ':module' has been enhanced as per the discussion on the
>          mailing list (syntax is still experimental - feedback
>    welcome).
> - ':browse'  similar to Hugs' :browse command.
> 
> And many other minor changes & bugfixes.
> 
> At the moment there is just the sources and a binary build for 
> x86-linux available.  We may add builds for other if they become 
> available.
> 
> You can get it from
> http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/ghc/download_ghc_snapshot.html
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> The GHC Development Team.