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authorSylvain Henry <sylvain@haskus.fr>2020-06-19 10:18:42 +0200
committerMarge Bot <ben+marge-bot@smart-cactus.org>2020-06-30 07:10:46 -0400
commitbccf3351a28638fba94953c4bb244ecfc3a1a044 (patch)
tree7e7c99efd0ab2f3297ea0888b601a1fb87fa583a
parent71006532abb88a53df7c7e0b3a5e2c8af99a48d1 (diff)
downloadhaskell-bccf3351a28638fba94953c4bb244ecfc3a1a044.tar.gz
Add ghc-bignum to 8.12 release notes
-rw-r--r--docs/users_guide/8.12.1-notes.rst23
1 files changed, 23 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/users_guide/8.12.1-notes.rst b/docs/users_guide/8.12.1-notes.rst
index aa602b4f7c..d324fbdbac 100644
--- a/docs/users_guide/8.12.1-notes.rst
+++ b/docs/users_guide/8.12.1-notes.rst
@@ -45,6 +45,29 @@ Highlights
This improves runtime but causes increased memory usage on Windows versions
older than Win 8.1/Server 2012.
+* Big-number support
+
+ - GHC now relies on a new "ghc-bignum" package to provide Integer/Natural
+ implementations. This package supports the following backends:
+ - gmp: adapted from integer-gmp package that was used before
+ - native: new Haskell implementation, faster than integer-simple which is
+ not used anymore
+
+ - All backends now use the same representation for big numbers (the one that
+ was previously used only by integer-gmp). It led to several compiler
+ simplifications, performance improvements and bug fixes (e.g.
+ :ghc-ticket:`15262`, :ghc-ticket:`15286`).
+
+ - All backends must provide exactly the same set of functions with
+ deterministic results so that they can be tested one against the other (they
+ can only differ in performance). As a consequence, some functions that were
+ only provided by integer-gmp (prime test, secure powmod, etc.) are no longer
+ provided by ghc-bignum. Note that other packages (e.g. hgmp) provide these
+ functions.
+
+ - For now GHC still doesn't allow dynamic selection of the ghc-bignum backend
+ to use.
+
Full details
------------