6.4.1 release candidate testing

[Simon Marlow]

On 01 August 2005 15:07, Simon Marlow wrote:

> This is to announce that testing for 6.4.1 has begun.  Snapshots from
> 20050730 onwards are release candidates - please test if you can.
> Snapshots are available from here:
> 
>    http://www.haskell.org/ghc/dist/stable/dist/
> 
> we have source snapshots, and binaries for Linux/x86 (RH 9.1 era),
> Linux/x86_64 (FC3 era), and Windows.
> 
> A *huge* number of fixes have gone in since 6.4.  Also, big news is
> that Linux/x86_64 will have a new native code generator and GHCi
> support (including Template Haskell), so we'd especially like to hear
> from anyone that can test on Linux/x86_64.  The GHCi support isn't
> complete: the interpreter can't currently handle FFI, and there are
> problems with data references to shared libraries from
> dynamically-loaded .o files, but otherwise it should be functional.

I forgot to mention: 6.4.1 will also have some big changes to the
package system.  Primarily:

  - A local module can shadow a package module with the same name,
    as long as the conflicting package is not otherwise depended upon
    somehow.

  - If two modules are in scope with the same name, the conflict will
    not be reported until you try to import the module.

these together mean it is much less likely that you can render your GHC
installation unusable by installing packages.

Also, as discussed on the libraries list recently:

  - specifying -package P without an explicit version number on P
    gets you the most recent version of P, instead of an error.

  - if multiple versions of a package are exposed, then GHC takes
    the one with the latest version in the absence of any -package
    options that specify otherwise.

We'd like to hear from anyone involved in packaging libraries whether
these changes work for you.

The new version of Cabal will *not* be in 6.4.1, but it'll be easy to
upgrade.

Cheers,
	Simon