[Haskell-cafe] [ANNOUNCE] GHC 9.6.1-alpha2 is now available

[Sylvain Henry]

There is an open MR about adding a mention of the JS backend to the 
release notes: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/merge_requests/9828

Sylvain


On 30/01/2023 23:52, Artem Pelenitsyn wrote:
> Thanks a lot, Ben and devs, for all the hard work!
>
> Would it be possible to mention the JS and WASM backends in the 
> release notes? Is it a simple oversight that there are not there, or 
> you want to wait until a release where they are more mature?
>
> --
> Best, Artem
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 1:22 PM Ben Gamari <ben at well-typed.com> wrote:
>
>
>     The GHC team is very pleased to announce the availability of GHC
>     9.6.1-alpha2. As usual, binaries and source distributions are
>     available
>     at downloads.haskell.org <http://downloads.haskell.org>:
>
>     https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.6.1-alpha2/
>
>     Beginning with GHC 9.6.1, GHC can be built as a cross-compiler to
>     WebAssembly and JavaScript. This is an important step towards robust
>     support for compiling Haskell to the Web, but there are a few
>     caveats to
>     be aware of in the 9.6 series:
>
>      - Both the Javascript and WebAssembly backends are still at an early
>        stage of development and are present in this release as a
>     technology
>        preview
>
>      - Using GHC as a cross-compiler is not as easy as we would like it to
>        be; in particular, there are challenges related to Template
>     Haskell.
>
>      - GHC is not yet run-time retargetable; a given GHC binary targets
>        exactly one platform, and both WebAssembly and JavaScript are
>        considered platforms for this purpose. Cross-compilers must be
>     built
>        from source by their users
>
>     We hope to lift all of these limitations in future releases.
>
>     Additionally, 9.6.1 will include:
>
>      - Significant latency improvements in the non-moving garbage
>     collector
>
>      - Efficient runtime support for delimited continuations
>
>      - Improvements in compiler error messages
>
>      - Numerous improvements in the compiler's memory usage
>
>     See the [release notes] for a comprehensive accounting of changes in
>     this release.
>
>     As always, one can find a [migration guide] to aid in
>     transitioning from
>     older releases on the GHC Wiki. We have also recently started
>     extending
>     our release process to cover a wider set of Linux distributions. In
>     particular, we now offer Rocky 8 and Ubuntu 20.04 binary distributions
>     which cover RedHat-derivative and distributions using older `glibc`
>     releases (namely 2.27), respectively.
>
>     Please do give this release a try and open a [ticket] if you see
>     anything amiss.
>
>     Cheers,
>
>     - Ben
>
>
>     [ticket]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/issues/
>     [migration-guide]:
>     https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/migration/9.6
>     [release notes]:
>     https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.6.1-alpha2/docs/users_guide/9.6.1-notes.html
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