[jhc] ANNOUNCE: jhc-0.8.0

[John Meacham]

I am happy to announce jhc 0.8.0

There have been A lot of major changes in jhc with this release.

 - http://repetae.net/computer/jhc

- A brand new and sanified library description file format. Now it is a true
  YAML file. The previous quasi-cabal files are supported but deprecated.

- new standard library 'bytestring' :)

- jhc can now embed C code and header files directly into hl libraries. The
  code will automatically be unpacked and linked when needed transparently.
  This allows 'bytestring' to carry around its fpsstring.c low level
  implementaton for instance without having to coordinate the install of C
  headers/code along with the jhc haskell library.

- the library description files now can affect pretty much any aspect of
  compilation, so it is much easier to make a self-contained build or for tools
  like configure/cabal to interface to jhc. They just need to spit out an
  appropriate yaml file rather than care about passing the right options to jhc
  in addition to creating a description file. See the user manual for the set
  of fields that can be set.

- jhc now understands ghc-style LANGUAGE pragmas and -X options and will
  translate them into the appropriate jhc extensions as needed.

- jhc transparently handles '.hsc' files (assuming you have hsc2hs installed).
  It even does the right thing when cross compiliing and will use the target
  architectures types rather than the hosts.

- the bang patterns extension has been implemented.

- the primtive libraries have been re-done, now there is a truely absolutely
  minimal jhc-prim library that is everything that must exist for jhc to work
  but brinsg in no code on its own. Everything else is implemented in user
  replaceable normal haskell code.

  Want to create a varient of haskell that has 16 bit Ints, ASCII 8 bit Chars
  and pervasively uses null terminated C style strings? just create a base-tiny
  library and link it against jhc-prim.

- The standalone deriving extension has been partially implemented, this
  greatly improves the ability to re-arrange the libraries logically.

- Better haskell 2010 compatibility.

- Haskell object files and the --ho-dir have been fully removed in favor of
  pervasive use of the code cache. This allows jhc to cache compilation results
  with finer granularity than individual files would allow. Command line
  options have been renamed accordingly, we have --cache-dir, --no-cache,
  --readonly-cache and --ignore-cache to modify jhcs behavior with respect to
  the cache. Additionally a --purge-cache option has been added.

- rather than trying to stuff everything in a monolithic .c file, jhc now
  builds a tree containing all the source needed to compile the final
  executable or shared library. This will help people porting jhc to new
  architectures and allows the embedding of c code in the haskell libraries.

- Many programs typecheked in the past that were in fact, invalid. most now
  fail properly with an informative message.

- pulled in most of the ghc typechecking regression tests.

- internal class representation completely re-worked.

- unboxed characters now supported, with the obvious syntax.


     John