ANNOUNCE: GHC 6.12.1 Release Candidate 1

[Ian Lynagh]

Hi all,

We are pleased to (finally!) announce the first release candidate
for GHC 6.12.1:

    http://darcs.haskell.org/~ghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/

As well as the source tarball:
    ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2
there are installers for Windows (i386) and OS X (i386), and binary
distributions for x86_64/Linux and i386/Linux. For the Linux binary
distributions, the "linux-n" tarballs are recommended over the "linux"
tarballs.


Please test as much as possible; bugs are much cheaper if we find them
before the release!


Thanks
Ian, on behalf of the GHC team

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[pweaver]

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Ian Lynagh <igloo@...> wrote:

Hi all,

We are pleased to (finally!) announce the first release candidate
for GHC 6.12.1:

   http://darcs.haskell.org/~ghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/

As well as the source tarball:
   ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2
there are installers for Windows (i386) and OS X (i386), and binary
distributions for x86_64/Linux and i386/Linux. For the Linux binary
distributions, the "linux-n" tarballs are recommended over the "linux"
tarballs.


Please test as much as possible; bugs are much cheaper if we find them
before the release!

Thanks!  I have been eager to try out 6.12.  Unlike many of the recent snapshots, this one built and installed fine on Mac OS X 10.6 :).
 

Is there an extralibs tarball that I should use with this?  I installed the release candidate without said tarball.  First, I noticed that my old version of cabal-install could not parse the output from ghc-pkg-6.12.0.20091010:

cabal: failed to parse output of 'ghc-pkg dump'
 
Then, when I tried to build the network package manually, I got this:

Building network-2.2.1.4...
[1 of 5] Compiling Network.URI      ( Network/URI.hs, dist/build/Network/URI.o )
[2 of 5] Compiling Network.Socket.Internal ( dist/build/Network/Socket/Internal.hs, dist/build/Network/Socket/Internal.o )
[3 of 5] Compiling Network.Socket   ( dist/build/Network/Socket.hs, dist/build/Network/Socket.o )

Network/Socket.hsc:1707:45:
    Not in scope: data constructor `System.Posix.Internals.Stream'

- Philip

Thanks
Ian, on behalf of the GHC team

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[Serge D. Mechveliani]

I have downloaded  ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2.
But where to read the release notes?
ANNOUNCE  shows ``version 6.10.1'', and lists the old features.
What is the difference of 6.12.1 w.r.to 6.10.4 ?

Regards,

-----------------
Serge Mechveliani
mechvel@...



On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 09:41:53PM +0100, Ian Lynagh wrote:

>
> Hi all,
>
> We are pleased to (finally!) announce the first release candidate
> for GHC 6.12.1:
>
>     http://darcs.haskell.org/~ghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/
>
> As well as the source tarball:
>     ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2
> there are installers for Windows (i386) and OS X (i386), and binary
> distributions for x86_64/Linux and i386/Linux. For the Linux binary
> distributions, the "linux-n" tarballs are recommended over the "linux"
> tarballs.
>
>
> Please test as much as possible; bugs are much cheaper if we find them
> before the release!
>
>
> Thanks
> Ian, on behalf of the GHC team
>
> _______________________________________________
> Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
> Glasgow-haskell-users@...
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
>

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[Simon Marlow-7]

On 12/10/2009 09:04, Serge D. Mechveliani wrote:
> I have downloaded  ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2.
> But where to read the release notes?
> ANNOUNCE  shows ``version 6.10.1'', and lists the old features.
> What is the difference of 6.12.1 w.r.to 6.10.4 ?

Release notes here, for now:

http://www.haskell.org/ghc/dist/current/docs/html/users_guide/release-6-12-1.html

Cheers,
        Simon

>
> Regards,
>
> -----------------
> Serge Mechveliani
> mechvel@...
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 09:41:53PM +0100, Ian Lynagh wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> We are pleased to (finally!) announce the first release candidate
>> for GHC 6.12.1:
>>
>>      http://darcs.haskell.org/~ghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/
>>
>> As well as the source tarball:
>>      ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2
>> there are installers for Windows (i386) and OS X (i386), and binary
>> distributions for x86_64/Linux and i386/Linux. For the Linux binary
>> distributions, the "linux-n" tarballs are recommended over the "linux"
>> tarballs.
>>
>>
>> Please test as much as possible; bugs are much cheaper if we find them
>> before the release!
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>> Ian, on behalf of the GHC team
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
>> Glasgow-haskell-users@...
>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
> Glasgow-haskell-users@...
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users

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[Simon Marlow-7]

On 12/10/2009 08:17, Philip Weaver wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Ian Lynagh <igloo@...
> <mailto:igloo@...>> wrote:
>
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     We are pleased to (finally!) announce the first release candidate
>     for GHC 6.12.1:
>
>     http://darcs.haskell.org/~ghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/
>     <http://darcs.haskell.org/%7Eghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/>
>
>     As well as the source tarball:
>         ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2
>     there are installers for Windows (i386) and OS X (i386), and binary
>     distributions for x86_64/Linux and i386/Linux. For the Linux binary
>     distributions, the "linux-n" tarballs are recommended over the "linux"
>     tarballs.
>
>
>     Please test as much as possible; bugs are much cheaper if we find them
>     before the release!
>
>
> Thanks!  I have been eager to try out 6.12.  Unlike many of the recent
> snapshots, this one built and installed fine on Mac OS X 10.6 :).
>
> Is there an extralibs tarball that I should use with this?  I installed
> the release candidate without said tarball.  First, I noticed that my
> old version of cabal-install could not parse the output from
> ghc-pkg-6.12.0.20091010:
>
> cabal: failed to parse output of 'ghc-pkg dump'

Yes, work is in progress on cabal-install to update it to work with GHC
6.12.1.  For now you have to use Cabal manually (runhaskell Setup
configure, etc.).

> Then, when I tried to build the network package manually, I got this:
>
> Building network-2.2.1.4...
> [1 of 5] Compiling Network.URI      ( Network/URI.hs,
> dist/build/Network/URI.o )
> [2 of 5] Compiling Network.Socket.Internal (
> dist/build/Network/Socket/Internal.hs,
> dist/build/Network/Socket/Internal.o )
> [3 of 5] Compiling Network.Socket   ( dist/build/Network/Socket.hs,
> dist/build/Network/Socket.o )
>
> Network/Socket.hsc:1707:45:
>      Not in scope: data constructor `System.Posix.Internals.Stream'

I think you may need the darcs version of the network package.

Cheers,
        Simon
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[Bulat Ziganshin-2]

Hello Simon,

Monday, October 12, 2009, 12:32:05 PM, you wrote:

> Release notes here, for now:
> http://www.haskell.org/ghc/dist/current/docs/html/users_guide/release-6-12-1.html

1. it says

>The following options are all described in Section 4.15.3, “RTS
>options to control the garbage collector”.
> * The flag +RTS -N now automatically determines how many threads to
>   use, based on the number of CPUs in your machine.

actually -N is decribed in "4.13.2. RTS options for SMP parallelism"

also, i propose to enable +RTS -N by default. Haskell is very popular
as multithreaded language, don't fool novices!



> "The -gn RTS option has been removed, except that -g1 is still
> accepted for backwards compatibility. "

why not ignore whole option for a 6.12.*?


--
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@...

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[Ian Lynagh]

Hi Philip,

Thanks for the feedback!

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 12:17:15AM -0700, Philip Weaver wrote:
> >
> Thanks!  I have been eager to try out 6.12.  Unlike many of the recent
> snapshots, this one built and installed fine on Mac OS X 10.6 :).

Interesting, I thought there were still problems there. Does ghci work
too?

> Is there an extralibs tarball that I should use with this?

No; extralibs no longer exist. Instead, we'll be recommending that most
users wait until a Haskell Platform release is available that comes with
the compiler.


Thanks
Ian

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[Barney Stratford]

>> this one built and installed fine on Mac OS X 10.6 :).
> Interesting, I thought there were still problems there.
I assume that's a 32-bit version. The problems manifest themselves  
only when you compile a 64-bit GHC.

I'm still trying to get mine working - no luck yet, but will keep you  
posted.

Barney.
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[Simon Marlow-7]

On 12/10/2009 10:07, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

> Hello Simon,
>
> Monday, October 12, 2009, 12:32:05 PM, you wrote:
>
>> Release notes here, for now:
>> http://www.haskell.org/ghc/dist/current/docs/html/users_guide/release-6-12-1.html
>
> 1. it says
>
>> The following options are all described in Section 4.15.3, “RTS
>> options to control the garbage collector”.
>> * The flag +RTS -N now automatically determines how many threads to
>>    use, based on the number of CPUs in your machine.
>
> actually -N is decribed in "4.13.2. RTS options for SMP parallelism"
>
> also, i propose to enable +RTS -N by default. Haskell is very popular
> as multithreaded language, don't fool novices!

I don't think we're ready for that yet.  The current implementation
assumes that it has access to the given number of cores, and performance
degrades severely if it doesn't.  So for example, using -N2 on a 2-core
machine may perform badly unless the machine is otherwise very quiet.
I've been working on improving this, but it's quite difficult: using
spinlocks and busy-waiting is a lot faster than using sleep/wakeup
synchronisation when you really have all the cores, but when you lose a
core things go haywire.  I've tried the usual "spin for a bit and then
go to sleep" technique, but even that can adversely affect performance
when you really do have all the cores, because sometimes we do have to
spin for quite a long time.  The only proper solution is not to
synchronise at all, which is what we're looking at now (CPU-independent GC).

You may notice this effect more with 6.12.1 because we turned on the
parallel GC for generation 0 by default.  This improves performance for
parallel programs a lot (see ICFP paper), but also means there are many
more all-core synchronisation points, which in turn will really hurt if
any of our threads is descheduled by the OS.

So right now, on a dual-core I'd recommend using -N2 -qg1 (don't use
parallel GC in gen 0), or -N2 -H<large>.

>> "The -gn RTS option has been removed, except that -g1 is still
>> accepted for backwards compatibility. "
>
> why not ignore whole option for a 6.12.*?

Because people might be using -g1?

Cheers,
        Simon
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[Christian Maeder-2]

This new version of ghc can no longer read ISO-8859 text. Text is cut
off after the first non-ascii character (ie. ¢).

Is this somewhere documented? What is the recommended way to handle such
text?

Cheers Christian

Ian Lynagh wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We are pleased to (finally!) announce the first release candidate
> for GHC 6.12.1:
>
>     http://darcs.haskell.org/~ghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/
>
> As well as the source tarball:
>     ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2
> there are installers for Windows (i386) and OS X (i386), and binary
> distributions for x86_64/Linux and i386/Linux. For the Linux binary
> distributions, the "linux-n" tarballs are recommended over the "linux"
> tarballs.
>
>
> Please test as much as possible; bugs are much cheaper if we find them
> before the release!
>
>
> Thanks
> Ian, on behalf of the GHC team

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[Simon Marlow-7]

On 12/10/2009 13:12, Christian Maeder wrote:
> This new version of ghc can no longer read ISO-8859 text. Text is cut
> off after the first non-ascii character (ie. ¢).
>
> Is this somewhere documented? What is the recommended way to handle such
> text?

Take a look at this:

http://ghcmutterings.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/heads-up-what-you-need-to-know-about-unicode-io-in-ghc-6-12-1/

and if you have any more questions, please post them here.

Cheers,
        Simon

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[Duncan Coutts-4]

On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 13:07 +0400, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

> also, i propose to enable +RTS -N by default. Haskell is very popular
> as multithreaded language, don't fool novices!

Note that you'd also have to enable -threaded by default. This would
have other surprising effects (like breaking most GUI progs).

Duncan

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[Bulat Ziganshin-2]

Hello Duncan,

Monday, October 12, 2009, 6:58:43 PM, you wrote:

>> also, i propose to enable +RTS -N by default. Haskell is very popular
>> as multithreaded language, don't fool novices!

> Note that you'd also have to enable -threaded by default. This would
> have other surprising effects (like breaking most GUI progs).

afair, it's on by default for a few years

and yes, i had SERIOUS problems with it in my GUI program :)

--
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@...

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[Christian Maeder-2]

Hi,

with
http://darcs.haskell.org/~ghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/ghc-6.12.0.20091010-i386-unknown-linux-n.tar.bz2
installed (under /local/maeder/) I get the following "internal Haddock
or GHC error". I have no file
  /local/maeder/lib/ghc-6.12.0.20091010/html/haddock.css
but a file
  /local/maeder/share/doc/ghc/html/html/haddock.css

and I run:
  ./Setup configure -O --prefix=/local/maeder
  ./Setup build
  ./Setup haddock
  ./Setup install

Cheers Christian

P.S. I wonder why "Registering" is done twice

Configuring packedstring-0.1.0.1...
Preprocessing library packedstring-0.1.0.1...
Building packedstring-0.1.0.1...
[1 of 1] Compiling Data.PackedString ( Data/PackedString.hs,
dist/build/Data/PackedString.o )

Registering packedstring-0.1.0.1...

Running Haddock for packedstring-0.1.0.1...

Preprocessing library packedstring-0.1.0.1...

Warning: The documentation for the following packages are not installed.
No
links will be generated to these packages: ffi-1.0, rts-1.0

haddock: internal Haddock or GHC error:
/local/maeder//lib/ghc-6.12.0.20091010/html/haddock.css: openFile: does
not exist (No such file or directory)
Installing library in

/local/maeder/lib/packedstring-0.1.0.1/ghc-6.12.0.20091010

Registering packedstring-0.1.0.1...



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[Duncan Coutts-4]

On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 19:29 +0400, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

> Hello Duncan,
>
> Monday, October 12, 2009, 6:58:43 PM, you wrote:
>
> >> also, i propose to enable +RTS -N by default. Haskell is very popular
> >> as multithreaded language, don't fool novices!
>
> > Note that you'd also have to enable -threaded by default. This would
> > have other surprising effects (like breaking most GUI progs).
>
> afair, it's on by default for a few years

With runghc and ghci you get the threaded rts by default. For compiled
standalone programs the single threaded rts is still the default. You
have to link using the -threaded flag to get the threaded rts.

> and yes, i had SERIOUS problems with it in my GUI program :)

Yeah, it's a long-standing tricky issue.

Duncan

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[Brent Yorgey-2]

What's the canonical way to install a version of ghc but not have it
be the default?  i.e., I'd like to try testing this release candidate
but I want to have to call it explicitly; I want 'ghc', 'ghc-pkg'
etc. to still be aliases to ghc-6.10.4, instead of being overwritten
by the 6.12.1 install.

-Brent

On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 09:41:53PM +0100, Ian Lynagh wrote:

>
> Hi all,
>
> We are pleased to (finally!) announce the first release candidate
> for GHC 6.12.1:
>
>     http://darcs.haskell.org/~ghc/dist/6.12.1rc1/
>
> As well as the source tarball:
>     ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2
> there are installers for Windows (i386) and OS X (i386), and binary
> distributions for x86_64/Linux and i386/Linux. For the Linux binary
> distributions, the "linux-n" tarballs are recommended over the "linux"
> tarballs.
>
>
> Please test as much as possible; bugs are much cheaper if we find them
> before the release!
>
>
> Thanks
> Ian, on behalf of the GHC team
>
> _______________________________________________
> Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list
> Glasgow-haskell-users@...
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users

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[Ben Franksen]

Simon Marlow wrote:
> On 12/10/2009 09:04, Serge D. Mechveliani wrote:
>> I have downloaded  ghc-6.12.0.20091010-src.tar.bz2.
>> But where to read the release notes?
>> ANNOUNCE  shows ``version 6.10.1'', and lists the old features.
>> What is the difference of 6.12.1 w.r.to 6.10.4 ?
>
> Release notes here, for now:
>
>
http://www.haskell.org/ghc/dist/current/docs/html/users_guide/release-6-12-1.html

In section 1.5.2. Warnings there is a duplication:

"""
 * There are two new warnings if a monadic result of type other than m () is
used in a do block, but its result is not bound. The
flags -fwarn-unused-do-bind and -fwarn-wrong-do-bind control these
warnings.

 * There is a new warning if a monadic result of type other than m () is not
bound. The flag -fwarn-unused-do-bind controls this warning.
"""

Cheers
Ben

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[Ben Franksen]

Brent Yorgey wrote:
> What's the canonical way to install a version of ghc but not have it
> be the default?  i.e., I'd like to try testing this release candidate
> but I want to have to call it explicitly; I want 'ghc', 'ghc-pkg'
> etc. to still be aliases to ghc-6.10.4, instead of being overwritten
> by the 6.12.1 install.

AFAIK think the answer is: compile from source and use --prefix option
to ./configure.

Cheers
Ben

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[Duncan Coutts-4]

On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 16:04 -0400, Brent Yorgey wrote:
> What's the canonical way to install a version of ghc but not have it
> be the default?  i.e., I'd like to try testing this release candidate
> but I want to have to call it explicitly; I want 'ghc', 'ghc-pkg'
> etc. to still be aliases to ghc-6.10.4, instead of being overwritten
> by the 6.12.1 install.

What I do is keep my default as /usr/bin/ghc, then when I install
testing versions I just rm the unversioned ghc scripts that get
installed in /usr/local/bin/ (because /usr/local/bin appears on my $PATH
first).

Duncan

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[Duncan Coutts-4]

On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 18:43 +0200, Christian Maeder wrote:

> P.S. I wonder why "Registering" is done twice

It's Cabal's fault. It's a new feature to let components within a
package depend on each other. To do that it needs to register the lib
into a local inplace package db. At the moment it's always doing it,
even when it's not strictly necessary. At some point we'll probably tidy
that up so that it only does so when it's needed. On the other hand,
always doing so during the testing phase has already caught a couple
configuration bugs so I'm not in any great rush to add the optimisation.

Duncan

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