nhc98 status


The latest stable release is 1.20. The darcs development tree is now at version 1.21. Bugfixes and important changes to the system are described here for the two most recent released versions.


nhc98 1.20 (2007-11-22) features

  • New: Pattern guards are supported.
  • New: More hierarchical libraries have been added to the base package.
  • Bugfix: Now builds on 64-bit machines (in 32-bit mode)
  • Bugfix: Newer version of hmake (3.13)
  • Bugfix: The evil mangler is now less evil (and more robust)
  • Bugfix: Add a workaround for the hi-membug that caused build failures on many recent Linux platforms.
  • Bugfix: Lexical error on varid _2a is fixed.
  • Bugfix: Renaming bug in newtype A a = A a.
  • Bugfix: hp2graph problem with x-axis resolution in interval (-i) sampling.
  • Bugfix: hp2graph end-of-file parsing bug.
  • New: The runtime system code is now documented using funnelweb.

nhc98 1.18 (2005-03-11) features

  • New: Several more packages of hierarchical libraries are included in the build: base, parsec, haskell-src, QuickCheck, HaXml, HUnit, Cabal.
  • New: FFI improvements: foreign import "dynamic" is now supported, and named C header-files are now used.
  • New: The compiler now uses cpphs for Haskell source instead of cpp. This removes problems with string gaps, primes in identifiers, and so on.
  • New: In hmake-interactive, if the readline library is not available, the simple line editor now has a history mechanism.
  • Bugfix: hmake's processing of cpp conditional directives is improved also.
  • Bugfix: Evil bugfixes for ghc versions ≥ 6.0
  • Bugfix: More evil bugfixes for gcc versions ≥ 3.3
  • Bugfix: A numeric pattern can now match against a Num newtype.
  • Bugfix: Foreign imports and abstract newtypes now play OK together.
  • Bugfix: Methods in qualified classes no longer need to be qualified in instance decls.
  • Bugfix: GreenCard now accepts <<.../...>> syntax.
  • Bugfix: Numerous internal tidy-ups, including fixes such that nhc98 can once again be built by hbc.

nhc98 1.16 (2003-03-08) features

  • New: A large subset of the base package of hierarchical libraries is now included in the build.
  • New: The primitive FFI mechanism has been updated to match the latest official spec, and the full Foreign libraries are also included (in hierarchical form).
  • Performance: The library function List.sortBy now uses a stable O(n log n) mergesort.
  • Bugfix: nhc98 now works correctly in the presence of gcc-3.x.
  • Bugfix: nhc98 once again builds on Cygwin with ghc.
  • Bugfix: Numerous other small fixes, including revisions to the Haskell'98 standard.

nhc98 1.14a (2002-08-13) features

  • The only change between 1.14 and 1.14a is that the version of hmake included in the source package has been updated from 3.05 to 3.06.

nhc98 1.14 (2002-06-14) features

  • New: The Hat tracing system is now entirely separate from the nhc98 compiler. Hat can now be used with either ghc or nhc98 - you should download and build the Hat system after building nhc98.
  • New: The compiler now supports a simplified version of ghc's package mechanism. No documentation yet, but Hat relies on it.
  • Performance: Various patches for improved time/space usage of the compiler itself, contributed by Thomas Nordin.
  • Bugfix: Various small fixes for OS environments like OpenBSD, ix86-Solaris, etc.

Previous release history (nhc98)

Release history of nhc13


Status of various components

The basic, stable, components include the compiler itself, the Standard Prelude and Libraries, heap profiling facilities, and the tools hmake, greencard, and hp2graph. Relatively recent additions to the system are the time profiler and common FFI.

component compiler prelude + libraries hierarchical libraries GreenCard hmake cpphs
quality release release release release release beta
last change 2007-07 2003-03 2007-08 2001 2005-02 2007-11
component heap profiling hp2graph time profiling common FFI hi HOOD
quality release release beta release release
last change 1997 1996 2001 2003-01 2000 2000

The latest updates to these pages are available on the WWW from http://www.haskell.org/nhc98/

This page last modified: 23rd November 2007
York Functional Programming Group