[Haskell-cafe] [ANNOUNCE] GHC 8.8.1-alpha2 is now available

[Matthew Pickering]

There seems to be no debian8 bindist which is different from every
release at least back to ghc-8.0.1.

On Sat, Jun 15, 2019 at 8:36 PM Ben Gamari <ben at well-typed.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> The GHC team is pleased to announce the second and likely last alpha
> release of GHC 8.8.1. The source distribution, binary distributions, and
> documentation are available at
>
>     https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.8.1-alpha2
>
> A draft of the release notes is also available [1].
>
> This release is the culmination of over 3000 commits by over one hundred
> contributors and has several new features and numerous bug fixes
> relative to GHC 8.6:
>
>  * Profiling now works correctly on 64-bit Windows (although still may
>    be problematic on 32-bit Windows due to platform limitations; see
>    #15934)
>
>  * A new code layout algorithm for amd64's native code generator
>
>  * The introduction of a late lambda-lifting pass which may reduce
>    allocations significantly for some programs.
>
>  * Further work on Trees That Grow, enabling improved code re-use of the
>    Haskell AST in tooling
>
>  * More locations where users can write `forall` (GHC Proposal #0007)
>
>  * Further work on the Hadrian build system
>
> This release brings a number of fixes since alpha 1:
>
>  * A number of linker fixes (#16779, #16784)
>
>  * The process, binary, Cabal, time, terminfo libraries have all been
>    bumped to their final release versions
>
>  * A regression rendering TemplateHaskell unusable in cross-compiled
>    configurations has been fixed (#16331)
>
>  * A regression causing compiler panics on compilation of some programs
>    has been fixed (#16449)
>
>  * -Wmissing-home-modules now handles hs-boot files correctly (#16551)
>
>  * A regression causing some programs to fail at runtime has been fixed
>    (#16066)
>
> Due to on-going work on our release and testing infrastructure this
> cycle is proceeding at a pace significantly slower than expected.
> However, we anticipate that this investment will allow us to release a
> more reliable, easier-to-install compiler on the planned six-month
> release cadence in the future.
>
> As always, if anything looks amiss do let us know.
>
> Happy compiling!
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Ben
>
> [1] https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/8.8.1-alpha2/docs/html/users_guide/8.8.1-notes.html
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