[Haskell] ANNOUNCE: GHC version 7.2.1

[Ian Lynagh]

   =============================================================
    The (Interactive) Glasgow Haskell Compiler -- version 7.2.1
   =============================================================

The GHC Team is pleased to announce a new major release of GHC, 7.2.1.

The 7.2 branch is intended to be more of a "technology preview" than
normal GHC stable branches; in particular, it supports a significantly
improved version of DPH, as well as new features such as compiler
plugins and "safe Haskell". The design of these new features may evolve
as we get more experience with them. See the release notes for more
details of what's new and what's changed.

We are also using this branch as an opportunity to work out the best
workflows to use with git.

We expect the 7.2 branch to be short-lived, with 7.4.1 coming out
shortly after ICFP as normal.


Full release notes are here:

  http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.2.1/html/users_guide/release-7-2-1.html

How to get it
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The easy way is to go to the web page, which should be self-explanatory:

        http://www.haskell.org/ghc/

We supply binary builds in the native package format for many
platforms, and the source distribution is available from the same
place.

Packages will appear as they are built - if the package for your
system isn't available yet, please try again later.


Background
~~~~~~~~~~

Haskell is a standard lazy functional programming language.

GHC is a state-of-the-art programming suite for Haskell.  Included is
an optimising compiler generating good code for a variety of
platforms, together with an interactive system for convenient, quick
development.  The distribution includes space and time profiling
facilities, a large collection of libraries, and support for various
language extensions, including concurrency, exceptions, and foreign
language interfaces (C, whatever).  GHC is distributed under a
BSD-style open source license.

A wide variety of Haskell related resources (tutorials, libraries,
specifications, documentation, compilers, interpreters, references,
contact information, links to research groups) are available from the
Haskell home page (see below).


On-line GHC-related resources
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relevant URLs on the World-Wide Web:

GHC home page              http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
GHC developers' home page  http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/
Haskell home page          http://www.haskell.org/


Supported Platforms
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The list of platforms we support, and the people responsible for them,
is here:

   http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Contributors

Ports to other platforms are possible with varying degrees of
difficulty.  The Building Guide describes how to go about porting to a
new platform:

    http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building


Developers
~~~~~~~~~~

We welcome new contributors.  Instructions on accessing our source
code repository, and getting started with hacking on GHC, are
available from the GHC's developer's site run by Trac:

  http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/


Mailing lists
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We run mailing lists for GHC users and bug reports; to subscribe, use
the web interfaces at

    http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
    http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-bugs

There are several other haskell and ghc-related mailing lists on
www.haskell.org; for the full list, see

    http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/

Some GHC developers hang out on #haskell on IRC, too:

    http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/IRC_channel

Please report bugs using our bug tracking system.  Instructions on
reporting bugs can be found here:

    http://www.haskell.org/ghc/reportabug