[nhc-users] ANNOUNCE: nhc98-1.18 and hmake-3.10

[Malcolm Wallace]

To complement today's fresh release of ghc-6.4....

		-------------------------
		nhc98-1.18  +  hmake-3.10
		-------------------------
		http://haskell.org/nhc98
		http://haskell.org/hmake

We are pleased to announce a new release of the nhc98 compiler and the
hmake compilation manager.  nhc98 is portable to almost any 32-bit
unix-like platform, and can be easily bootstrapped with just a C
compiler if no existing Haskell compiler is available.  Hmake plays
happily with ghc and hbc as well as nhc98.

This release is mainly a maintenance refresh, fixing numerous bugs,
and adding support for many of the new hierarchical libraries that
are also supplied with ghc-6.4 and Hugs.

Main bugfixes:
    * Resolved configuration bugs when using ghc-6.2 and ghc-6.4 with hmake.
    * Build failures associated with gcc-3.3 and upward have been fixed.

Main feature updates:
    * Supplied with these standard library packages:
          base, parsec, haskell-src, QuickCheck, HaXml, HUnit, Cabal
    * FFI: foreign import "dynamic" is now supported, and C
           header-files named in an import are now respected.
    * cpphs: The compiler and hmake now use cpphs rather than your
             C compiler for preprocessing.  This removes problems with
             string gaps, primes in identifiers, and so on.
    * Source now supplied with a small test suite to help verify whether
      the compiler works on new platforms.

This release of nhc98 has been tested with the following machines
and build compilers:
    ix86-Linux      (Slackware 10 and RedHat 7.2
                     built with ghc-5, ghc-6, hbc, gcc-2.95, gcc-3.3, nhc98)
    ix86-Cygwin     (Windows 2000 built with gcc-3.3, ghc-6)
    sparc-solaris2  (SunOS 5.9 built with ghc-6, gcc-2.95, nhc98)
    powerpc-Darwin7 (MacOS X 10.3 using ghc-6, gcc-2.95, gcc-3.3)

Credits:
    Malcolm Wallace (release manager)
    Ian Lynagh (gcc-3.3 bugfixes, hmake-config add-dyn)
    Wolfgang Thaller (MacOS gcc-3.3 bugfixes)
    Simon Marlow (ghc configuration fixes)
    Sven Panne (warning police, hbc build)
    numerous library authors, distribution packagers, and bug reporters.