diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | docs/users_guide/8.12.1-notes.rst | 23 |
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 ------------ |