ANNOUNCE: GHC version 5.04 released

[Simon Marlow]

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    The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 5.04
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We are pleased to announce a new major release of the Glasgow Haskell
Compiler (GHC), version 5.04.

Highlights include:

  * Hierarchical libraries, with documentation produced by Haddock.

  * New type system extensions: full rank-N types and kind
    annotations.
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  * New heap profiling facilities (retainer profiling, biographical
    profiling).

  * MacOS X support

See the release notes for a full list of the changes:

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http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/release-5-04.htm
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How to get it
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The easy way is to go to the WWW page, which should be self-explanatory:

        http://www.haskell.org/ghc/

We supply binary builds in the native package format for various
flavours of Linux and BSD, and in InstallShield form for Windows
folks.  Binary builds for other platforms are available as a .tar.bz2
which can be installed wherever you want.  The source distribution is
also available from the same place.

Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your system
isn't available yet, come back later.


Background
~~~~~~~~~~
Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the
current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998.

GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell.  Included is
an optimising compiler generating good 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 (C, whatever).  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             http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
Haskell home page         http://www.haskell.org/
comp.lang.functional FAQ  http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/faq.html



System requirements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To compile programs with GHC, you need a machine with 64+MB memory, GCC
and perl. This release is known to work on the following platforms:

  * i386-unknown-{linux,*bsd,mingw32}
  * sparc-sun-solaris2
  * alpha-dec-osf3
  * powerpc-apple-darwin (MacOS/X)

Ports to the following platforms should be relatively easy (for a
wunderhacker), but haven't been tested due to lack of time/hardware:

  * hppa1.1-hp-hpux{9,10}
  * i386-unknown-solaris2
  * mips-sgi-irix{5,6}
  * {rs6000,powerpc}-ibm-aix

The builder's guide on the web site gives a complete run-down of what
ports work; it can be found at

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http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/building/building-guide.html


Mailing lists
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use
the web interfaces at

	http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
	http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs

There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on
www.haskell.org; for the full list, see

	http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/

Please report bugs using our SourceForge page at
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	http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghc/

or send them to glasgow-haskell-bugs@haskell.org.

GHC users hang out on glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org.  Bleeding
edge CVS users party on cvs-ghc@haskell.org.