ANN: ghc 6.8.2 from MacPorts

[Gregory Wright]

After what many would consider an unconscionable delay, I am happy to  
announce
that ghc 6.8.2 is available from MacPorts.

The ghc 6.8.2 port is available for Tiger/ppc, Tiger/intel and Leopard/ 
intel.  Users with
Leopard/ppc are out of luck until for now, for reason discussed  
earlier on this list.

In partial recompense for their patience, users will get a ghc with  
more patches
than any previous MacPorts ghc.

A few notes:

	The file locking bugs #1992 and #2134 are fixed.  Bug #1992 was a  
simple
	lock logic error and should be killed dead.  Bug #2134 was the result  
of a lazy readFile
	holding a lock for an unpredictable time.  There may be more cases  
like this one,
	and I would appreciate a note from anyone who come across a lock  
error during building.

	Users on Leopard/intel must upgrade to 10.5.2 to avoid an OS bug  
which under
	unusual circumstances would repeatably (and mysteriously) crash the  
build.
	This was first noticed running the building in an eshell under  
Aquamacs.  Archives
	were built without tables of contents because ranlib wasn't being run  
or wasn't
	running to completion.  Builds in the usual Terminal.app didn't trip  
over this bug.

	OpenGL support is built by default.  It can be turned off using the  
no_opengl variant.

	OpenAL support is disabled.  Apple's OpenAL framework lacks ALUT  
support (needed
	for the ghc binding) but has name clashes with the freealut library  
from the OpenAL.org
	website.  Fixing this is probably straightforward.  If someone is  
interested, I can give
	them some pointers on getting started.

	MacPort's ghc ought to always link with the correct libgmp (the one  
provided by the gmp port).


The latest versions of alex, happy, haddock and hs-Edison are also  
available.


Best Wishes,
Greg