[Haskell-cafe] Announce: Haskell Platform 8.6.3

[Gershom B]

On behalf of the Haskell Platform team, I'm happy to announce the release of

Haskell Platform 8.6.3

Now available at

https://www.haskell.org/platform/

This includes GHC 8.6.3, cabal-install 2.4.1.0, and stack 1.9.3. This
is the first platform released in the 8.6 series, as we have waited
until a number of bugfix ghc releases stabilized things across all
core platforms (linux, os x, windows).

A full list of contents is available at
https://www.haskell.org/platform/contents.html

The list of GHC changes is available at:
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/ghc-8.6.1-released
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/ghc-8.6.2-released
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/blog/ghc-8.6.3-released

A list of cabal changes is available at:
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/cabal-install-2.4.1.0/changelog

A list of stack changes is available at:
https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/stable/ChangeLog/#v193

There are a number of important changes in this release, with more
changes planned in the future. First: Win32 builds are working again
and provided. Thanks to all the folks (especially Tamar) who helped
sort out the build issues on that platform.

Second, only core builds are provided, not "full" builds. This release
is the first one where cabal-install warns on legacy commands and asks
users to either use the v1-prefix for them or the v2/new prefix to
move to the new-build system. As such, providing additional global
packages outside of the core set now makes even less sense than in the
past, where we had been already discouraging it for some time.

Finally, there are no linux generic builds provided, and instead we
recommend use of the ghcup tool (https://github.com/haskell/ghcup/) in
combination with the stack install script. We feel this gives a
smoother and better experience than the existing install process,
being less invasive (not requiring root) and more flexible (by running
ghc's own configure script it can better detect differences in
configuration between distros).

What does this all mean for the future of the platform? What I would
like to move towards is the following. First: replacing the mac
installer by ghcup as well in the near future. While a native
installer has its advantages, the same reasons that ghcup is
recommended on linux hold for mac as well, although with somewhat less
force. Because of how Windows works, the difficulties of moving from a
native installer are much more real, and we would anticipate keeping a
native installer for the time being.

Second: with the platform installers (or recommended installers) now
really a delivery mechanism for core binaries and nothing else, to
move to split the platform into two components. A) a set of
recommended install instructions for major platforms (and a native
windows installer), and B) a set of recommended and known-compatible
packages which cover most "extended standard-lib" bases and which we
again grow much more freely, as in the past. This will require some
redesign and reconceptualization of the website, and would be a great
opportunity for people that want to chip-in to move things forward to
get involved. Please reach out if you'd like to lend a hand!

Happy Haskell Hacking all,
Gershom