Release plans

Donald Bruce Stewart dons at cse.unsw.edu.au
Mon Apr 16 15:09:55 EDT 2007


simonmarhaskell:
> We'd like to solicit comments from the community on our plans for future 
> GHC releases.  The current situation is this:
> 
>  - 6.6.1 is nearly ready to go (perhaps this week, please test the RC!)
>  - 6.6.2 has ~35 outstanding tickets
>  - 6.8 has ~150 outstanding tickets
> 
> the default option would be to work on 6.6.2 and release it in a couple of 
> months, while continuing to work on 6.8 for a release in ~6 months or so.
> 
> However, there's another option: we could skip 6.6.2 and head straight for 
> 6.8, the idea being to stabilise 6.8 with the existing feature set (plus a 
> few important developments in progress), so that we can get these features 
> out in a release sooner rather than later.  The 6.6.2 tickets would be 
> moved to 6.8, and most of the outstanding 6.8 tickets would be pushed to 
> 6.8.1 or later, retaining only the features/bug-fixes that are essential 
> for the 6.8 release.
> 
> Here's a quick summary of the major developments that we already have in 
> the 6.8 codebase:
> 
> - Associated data types, and the new FC intermediate language
> - GHCi debugger (although there's an overhaul of the breakpoint support 
> almost
>   ready to go in)
> - Coverage (HPC)
> - GADTs + typeclasses
> - more packages moved from core to extralibs
> - GHC API changes, compile to object code inside GHCi
> - performance improvements: simplifier rewrite, and SpecConstr improvements
> - standalone deriving declarations
> - left-to-right impredicative instantiation: runST $ foo
> 
> Here are the features in progress that we'd like to get into 6.8:
> 
> - pointer-tagging (15% perf improvement for compiled code)
> - get external core working again
> - base package breakup (see discussion on libraries list)

Yes. Along with the new release of bytestring, on top of stream fusion.

> - list fusion

Ok. Still needs some work on GHC's optimiser, but the fusion system
itself is done. So this is definitely doable.

> 
> We think the above feature set makes for a pretty strong 6.8 release.
> 
> What do you think of this plan?  Are there features/bug-fixes that you 
> really want to see in 6.8?

Sounds like a good plan. 6.8 here we come!

-- Don


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