7.8.3 for the Platform

[Austin Seipp]

Hi Mark,

I was planning on releasing GHC 7.8.3 very soon (in the next few
days,) and I'm wondering if it is still a possible candidate for the
next Haskell Platform?

To be clear, there are no library updates this time around - 7.8.3 is
almost 100% a pure compiler/runtime bugfix release, and some of the
fixes are quite bad.

https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/9078
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8768
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/9148
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/9001

The first one, #9078, would be particularly bad to let slip into the
release - it affects possibly all EDSLs using mkStableName for
sharing, and is very easy to trigger by allocating stable names
quickly. I'd say #8768 is somewhat nasty as well. Accelerate and SBV
are two examples of projects that will crash.

There are currently no plans to even bump the corresponding library
numbers - we didn't do so for 7.8.2, and there are no changes at all
that would warrant a bump for 7.8.3. It's really a stability release
more than anything and irons out several real bumps.

Do let me know what you think - I'll keep this thread updated as the
release gets closer if anything else goes in.

-- 
Regards,

Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/