ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.2.1

[Simon Marlow]

   ============================================================
    The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 6.2.1
   ============================================================

We are pleased to announce a new patchlevel release of the Glasgow
Haskell Compiler (GHC), version 6.2.1.  As usual for patchlevel
releases, this is mainly a bugfix release and should not break any
code that was working with the previous major release (6.2).

We did sneak a couple of new features into the compiler:

  - The "threaded runtime system" is included by default.  To link
    a program with this variant of the RTS, add the -threaded option
    when linking.  The main advantage of the threaded RTS is that it
    allows calls to foreign functions which block, while allowing
    other concurrent Haskell threads to continue running.

  - A debugging variant of the RTS is also included.  Use -debug
    when linking to get it.  The debugging RTS includes lots of
    sanity checking and has some extra options for producing debugging
    output while your Haskell program is running.


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 Windows Installer (MSI) form
for Windows folks.  Binary builds for other platforms are available
as a .tar.gz 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, please try again later.

Background
~~~~~~~~~~
Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language; the
current language version is Haskell 98, agreed in December 1998 and
revised December 2002.

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

 
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
	
	http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghc/

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

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