GHC now supports SMP: when you compile with -threaded, you now get an RTS flag -N that allows you to specify the number of OS threads that GHC should use. Defaults to 1. See and . GHC now handles impredicative polymorphism; see . There are significant changes to the way scoped type variables work, and some programs that used to compile may no longer do so. The new story is documented in . ( Simon's e-mail gives some background, but the user manual should be complete (tell us if not), and certainly takes precedence if there is any conflict.) GHC now supports bang patterns to require a function is strict in a given argument, e.g. f (!x, y) = [x,y] is equivalent to f (x, y) | x `seq` False = undefined | otherwise = [x,y] See for more details. The restriction that you cannot use two packages together if they contain a module with the same name has been removed. In implementation terms, the package name is now included in every exported symbol name in the object file, so that modules with the same name in different packages do not clash. See . GHC now treats source files as UTF-8 (ASCII is a strict subset of UTF-8, so ASCII source files will continue to work as before). However, invalid UTF-8 sequences are ignored in comments, so ASCII code with comments in, for example, Latin-1 will also work. A way to have Latin-1 source files pre-processed by GHC is described in . GADTs can now use record syntax. Also, if the datatype could have been declared with Haskell 98 syntax then deriving clauses are permitted. For more info see . There is a new pragma LANGUAGE which allows extensions to be specified portably, i.e. without having to resort to the OPTIONS_GHC pragma and giving GHC-specific options. The arguments to the pragma are the same extensions that Cabal knows about. More info in . When you use ghc --make, GHC will now take the executable filename from the name of the file containing the Main module rather than using a.out. The .exe extension is appended on Windows, and it can of course be overridden with -o. GHC's garbage collector now deals more intelligently with mutable data, so you mostly no longer need to worry about GC performance when a lot of memory is taken up by STArrays, IOArrays, STRefs or IORefs. For more details see trac bug #650. GHC now allows more generalisation when typing mutually recursive bindings, resulting in more programs being accepted. See for more details. The rules for instance declarations have been further relaxed. You are now permitted to have instances whose heads contain only type variables, e.g. instance C a and instances whose constraints are not only type variables, e.g. instance C2 Int a => C3 [a] b For more details, see . The following flags (and, where appropriate, their inverses) used to be static (can only be given on the command line) but are now dynamic (can also be given in a GHC_OPTIONS pragma or with :set in GHCi): -c, -hcsuf, -hidir, -hisuf, -o, -odir, -ohi, -osuf, -keep-hc-file, -keep-s-file, -keep-raw-s-file, -keep-tmp-files, -tmpdir, -i, -package, -hide-package, -ignore-package, -package-conf, -no-user-package-conf, -fcontext-stack, -fexcess-precision, -fignore-asserts, -fignore-interface-pragmas, -I, -framework, -framework-path, -l, -L, -main-is, -no-hs-main, -split-objs, -pgmL, -pgmP, -pgmc, -pgma, -pgml, -pgmdll, -pgmF, -optl, -optdll, -optdep, -fno-asm-mangling. See for more on the meaning of static and dynamic flags, and for more on the flags themselves. There is a new flag -x for overriding the default behaviour for source files; see details. The -no-recomp-no-recomp option is now called -fforce-recomp-fforce-recomp. (the old name is still accepted for backwards compatibility, but will be removed in the future). The -fglobalise-toplev-names flag has been removed. The -fallow-overlapping-instances flag is implied by the -fallow-incoherent-instances flag. The directory that the foo_stub.c and foo_stub.h files are put in can now be controlled with the -stubdir flag. See for more details. When the -fno-implicit-prelude is given, the equality test performed when pattern matching against an overloaded numeric literal now uses the (==) in scope, rather than the one from Prelude. Likewise, the subtraction and inequality test performed when pattern matching against n+k patterns uses the (-) and (>=) in scope. Another change to -fno-implicit-prelude: with the exception of the arrow syntax, the types of functions used by sugar (such as do notation, numeric literal patterns) need not match the types of the Prelude functions normally used. The InstalledPackageInfo syntax has changed. Now instead of extra-libs we have extra-libraries, instead of extra-hugs-opts we have hugs-options, instead of extra-cc-opts we have cc-options, instead of extra-ld-opts we have ld-options, and instead of extra-frameworks we have frameworks. See for details. If you newtype the IO monad, e.g. newtype MyIO a = MyIO (IO a) then GHC will now allow you to have FFI calls return MyIO t rather than just IO t. See GHC's mechansim for deriving user-defined classes for newtypes has been further generalised, to multi-parameter type classes and higher-kinded types. See . By default, pattern bindings in GHC are now monomorphic. This means that some valid Haskell 98 programs will get rejected, but we believe they will be few in number. To revert to the old behaviour use the -fno-mono-pat-binds flag. More details are in . GHCi already does more defaulting than Haskell 98 so that, for example, reverse [] shows a result rather than giving an ambiguous type variable error. There is now a flag -fextended-default-rules to use these defaulting rules with GHC too. More details are in . You can now give both class and instance declarations in .hs-boot files. More details in . Linear implicit parameters have been scheduled for removal for some time. In 6.6 we've removed them from the user manual, and they may well disappear from the compiler itself in 6.6.1. If the program is idle for a certain amount of time then GHC will now take the opportunity to do a major garbage collection. The amount of idle time that is required before that happens is controlled by the new -I RTS flag. There is more detail in . It is now possible to control the frequency that the RTS clock ticks at with the new -V RTS flag. This is normally handled automatically by other flags, but this flag is needed if you want to increase the resolution of the time profiler. For more details see . The old syntax for FFI declarations (deprecated since 5.04) is no longer accepted. The -split-objs flag, which when used to compile libraries means executables using the library will be smaller, can now be used with --make and hence can be used by cabal. See for more information. Template Haskell used to have limited support for type signatures in patterns, but since that design is in flux for Haskell (let alone Template Haskell), we've removed type signatures in patterns from Template Haskell. GHC now supports postfix operators, as a simple generalisation of left sections (). Parallel arrays, as enabled by -fparr, no longer work. They'll be coming back shortly, in full glory. GHCi now allows tab completion of in-scope names and modules on platforms that use readline (i.e. not Windows). GHCi now has a :main command that allows you to call the main function with command-line arguments. See for more information. GHCi now has :ctags and :etags commands to generate tags files for vi-style and emacs-style editors respectively. See for more information. GHCi now has an :edit command which pops up an editor on the most recently loaded file, or a specified file. See for more information. GHCi now invokes print by default on the result of IO actions and bindings at the prompt. This is occasionally not what you want, so it can be disabled (at least for bindings) with :set -fno-print-bind-result. See . Libraries are now divided into core libraries (those that are necessary to build GHC) and extra libraries. Decoupling the extra libraries means that they can release independently of GHC releases, and makes development builds of GHC quicker as they no longer need to build unnecessary libraries. The hslibs libraries have finally been removed. Version number 2.1 (was 1.0). We now have Read and Show instances for up to 15-tuples (used to be up to 5-tuples). New module Control.Applicative that describes a structure intermediate between a functor and a monad: it provides pure expressions and sequencing, but no binding. Control.Exception now exports bracketOnError, which behaves like bracket but only runs the final action if the main action raised an error. There is a new module Control.Monad.Instances which provides Monad and Functor instances for ((->) r) (were in mtl's Control.Monad.Reader), a Functor instance for (Either a) (was in mtl's Control.Monad.Error) and a Functor instance for ((,) a) (new). The MonadFix instance for ((->) r) is now in Control.Monad.Fix (was in mtl's Control.Monad.Reader). Control.Monad.ST now exports unsafeSTToIO. The HasBounds class has been removed from Data.Array.Base, and its bounds method is now in the IArray class. The MArray class has also gained a method getBounds. Data.Array.Base now provides an MArray (STArray s) e (Lazy.ST s) instance. Data.Array.Storable now exports a function unsafeForeignPtrToStorableArray. The new Data.ByteString hierarchy provides time and space-efficient byte vectors. The old Data.PackedString module is now deprecated as a result, although there is not yet a replacement if you need full unicode support. GHC.Exts now provides a function inline which, provided the RHS is visible to the compiler, forcibly inlines its argument. Otherwise, it acts like id. For more details, see . GHC.Exts now provides a function lazy, where lazy f behaves like f, except GHC is forced to believe that it is lazy in its first argument. For more details, see . Data.FiniteMap has been removed (deprecated since 6.4). Use Data.Map instead. Data.Char now exports isLetter, isMark, isNumber, isPunctuation, isSymbol, isSeparator, isAsciiUpper, isAsciiLower and toTitle. It also exports a function generalCategory that tells you the category of a character in terms of a datatype GeneralCategory. Data.Dynamic now exports a function dynTypeRep. There is a new module Data.Eq which just exports the Eq class. Likewise, a new module Data.Ord exports the Ord class, as well as the handy comparing function. There is a new module Data.Fixed providing fixed-precision arithmetic. There is a new module Data.Foldable providing a class for foldable datatypes. It gives instances for Maybe, [] and Array i. There is a new module Data.Traversable providing a class for data structures that can be traversed from left to right. It gives instances for Maybe, [] and Array i. Data.FunctorM has been deprecated; use Data.Foldable and Data.Traversable instead. The toConstr definitions for tuples in Data.Generics.Instances now actually evaluate their arguments to tuples before returning anything. Data.IntMap now exports notMember, alter, mapMaybe, mapMaybeWithKey, mapEither and mapEitherWithKey. It also has Monoid, Foldable and Read instances. Data.IntSet now exports notMember. It also has Monoid and Read instances. Data.Map now exports notMember, alter, mapMaybe, mapMaybeWithKey, mapEither, mapEitherWithKey, minView and maxView. It also has Monoid, Traversable, Foldable and Read instances. Data.Set now exports notMember, minView and maxView. It also has Monoid, Foldable and Read instances. The old, deprecated (since 6.4) interface consisting of emptySet, mkSet, setToList, unitSet, elementOf, isEmptySet, cardinality, unionManySets, minusSet, mapSet, intersect, addToSet and delFromSet has been removed. Data.Monoid no longer contains the Monoid instances for Map, IntMap, Set and IntSet. They have been moved to their own modules, as above. The (a -> a) instance has been replaced with a Monoid b => Monoid (a -> b) instance. The module also now exports Dual, Endo, All, Any, Sum and Product types, and Monoid instances for them. There is a new module Data.Sequence for finite sequences. The Data.Queue module is now deprecated in favour of this faster, more featureful replacement. Data.Tree now has Data, Typeable, Traversable and Foldable instances for the Tree datatype. Data.Typeable now uses -fallow-overlapping-instances, so the generic instances can be overriden for your own datatypes. Debug.Trace now exports traceShow, which is the same as trace except its first argument can be any showable thing rather than being required to be a string. Foreign.C.Types now also defines CIntPtr, CUIntPtr, CIntMax and CUIntMax. Foreign.ForeignPtr now exports FinalizerEnvPtr, newForeignPtrEnv and addForeignPtrFinalizerEnv. Together, these allow the use of finalizers which are passed an additional environment parameter. Foreign.Marshal.Utils no longer exports the withObject function, deprecated since 5.04; use with instead. Foreign.Ptr now also defines IntPtr, ptrToIntPtr, intPtrToPtr, WordPtr, ptrToWordPtr and wordPtrToPtr. There are now Bounded instances for up to 15-tuples (used to be up to 4-tuples). The Text.Html and Text.Html.BlockTable modules have now been removed, with the new html and xhtml packages providing replacements. Text.Read now exports a function parens which parses a value in an arbitrary number of parentheses. The ForeignPtr datatype has been altered to make it more efficient. There are also new functions mallocPlainForeignPtr and mallocPlainForeignPtrBytes which do not allow you to attach a finalizer to the ForeignPtr. The Text.Regex and Text.Regex.Posix modules have been removed. Instead, use the new regex-compat package for a drop-in Text.Regex replacement, or the new library in the new regex-posix package. Version number 1.1.6 (was 1.1.4). Support for JHC, symmetric to the support for the other implementations, has been added throughout. Support for object splitting and building in-place has been added throughout. Added a debianTemplate directory with templates for building Debian packages from Cabal packages. There are now modules Distribution.Simple.compiler for each of GHC, NHC, Hugs and JHC. The Distribution.Simple.Build and Distribution.Simple.Install modules have shrunk correspondingly. Distribution.GetOpt is no longer a visible module. Distribution.Simple exports a function defaultMainArgs, which is identical to defaultMain except that the arguments are given as a list of strings rather than being retrieved with getArgs. Distribution.Simple.Configure no longer exports LocalBuildInfo, but does now export configDependency and configCompilerAux. Distribution.Simple.LocalBuildInfo now exports mkHaddockDir, distPref, srcPref, autogenModulesDir and mkIncludeDir. Distribution.PackageDescription now exports haddockName. Distribution.Simple.Utils now exports copyDirectoryRecursiveVerbose, dirOf, distPref, haddockPref and srcPref. It no longer exports mkGHCiLibName. No change (version 1.0). Version number 2.0 (was 1.0). No other change. No change (version 1.0). Version 0.71. New library that provides common functions for different regex backends. Version 0.71. New package providing a replacement Text.Regex module. Version 0.71. A new package providing POSIX regexes. Version number 2.1 (was 1.0). A new module Control.Monad.STM contains the MonadPlus instance for STM and the function check (both used to be in Control.Concurrent.STM). It also re-exports STM, atomically, retry, orElse and catchSTM. A new module Control.Concurrent.STM.TArray defines TArray, a transactional array, and makes it an instance of MArray. Control.Concurrent.STM.TChan now provides a function newTChanIO, which allows TChans to be created in the IO monad. Similarly, Control.Concurrent.STM.TMVar provides newTMVarIO and newEmptyTMVarIO, and Control.Concurrent.STM.TVar exports newTVarIO. Control.Concurrent.STM.TVar exports registerDelay. The Control.Concurrent.STM module has been updated to re-export all the new modules. Version number 2.0 (was 1.0). A Show instance is now derived for Info, Fixity and FixityDirection in Language.Haskell.TH.Syntax. In Language.Haskell.TH.Syntax, there is a type PkgName and functions mkPkgName and pkgString for dealing with package names. The patGE function in Language.Haskell.TH.Lib now takes the final expression separately to the list of statements rather than splitting it off itself. No change (version 1.0). Version number 2.1 (was 1.0). Now maintained by Esa Ilari Vuokko. There is a new module System.Win32.Console providing an interface to the Windows Console API. There is a new module System.Win32.DebugApi providing an interface to the Windows DebugApi. There is a new module System.Win32.FileMapping for working with memory-mapped files. There is a new module System.Win32.SimpleMAPI for using the Windows mail API. There is a new module System.Win32.Time for using the Windows time API. iNVALID_HANDLE_VALUE has moved from Graphics.Win32.Misc to System.Win32.Types. System.Win32.File has a new function getFileInformationByHandle and associated data types. System.Win32.Info has a new function getSystemInfo and associated data types. System.Win32.Process now has many more exports. System.Win32.Types has new types LARGE_INTEGER, DDWORD and SIZE_T. It also has new helper functions ddwordToDwords and dwordsToDdword to split and combine ddwords into high and low components. System.Win32 re-exports System.Win32.FileMapping, System.Win32.Time and System.Win32.Console. Version number 2.0 (was 1.0). Sound.ALUT.BuiltInSounds has been removed. Its Phase and Duration exports are now exported by Sound.ALUT.Loaders and its helloWorld, sine, square, sawtooth, impulse and whiteNoise exports are now constructors of the Sound.ALUT.Loaders.SoundDataSource datatype. Version number 0.2 (was 0.1). Control.Sequence has been removed in favour of the new Control.Applicative module in base. Version 2006.8.14. cgi is a new package, developing on what used to be Network.CGI in the network package. The Network.CGI.Compat module provides a similar interface to the old Network.CGI module, but it uses Text.XHtml rather than Text.Html. Version number 5.3 (was 5.2). Data.Graph.Inductive.Graph no longer exports UContext. Data.Graph.Inductive.Graph now exports delLEdge. Version number remains 2.0. In Graphics.UI.GLUT.Initialization, DisplayMode has a new constructor WithAuxBuffers and DisplayCapability has a new constructor DisplayAux. These represent freeglut-only features. There are new examples in BOGLGP/Chapter03/OnYourOwn1.hs, RedBook/AAIndex.hs, RedBook/AARGB.hs, RedBook/AccAnti.hs, RedBook/AccPersp.hs, RedBook/Alpha3D.hs, RedBook/DOF.hs, RedBook/FogIndex.hs, RedBook/Multisamp.hs, RedBook/PointP.hs, RedBook/PolyOff.hs, RedBook/Stencil.hs, RedBook/Stroke.hs and RedBook/Torus.hs, and the examples in RedBook/Font.hs and RedBook/Histogram.hs have been improved. No change (version 1.0). No change (version 3.1). Version 1.0. html is a new package, developing on what used to be Text.Html and Text.Html.BlockTable in the base package. Text.Html.BlockTable exports a new function empty. No change (version 1.1). No change (version 1.0). Version number 2.0 (was 1.0). Network.CGI has been removed; use the cgi package instead. Network.BSD no longer exports symlink or readlink; use System.Posix.Files.createSymbolicLink and System.Posix.Files.readSymbolicLink instead. Network.BSD now exports defaultProtocol. Network.Socket.SocketStatus now has a constructor ConvertedToHandle for sockets that have been converted to handles. Network.Socket.Family now has the following additional constructors: AF_NETROM, AF_BRIDGE, AF_ATMPVC, AF_ROSE, AF_NETBEUI, AF_SECURITY, AF_PACKET, AF_ASH, AF_ECONET, AF_ATMSVC, AF_IRDA, AF_PPPOX, AF_WANPIPE and AF_BLUETOOTH. In Network.URI, parseabsoluteURI has been deprecated with a new function parseAbsoluteURI taking its place. No change (version 1.0). Version number 1.3 (was 1.2). No other change. Version number 2.1 (was 2.0). No other change. No change (version 1.0). Version 1.0. time is a new package, for dealing with dates, times and time intervals. Version number 1.2 (was 1.1). In Graphics.X11.Xlib.Types, XGCValues has been renamed GCValues and XSetWindowAttributes has been renamed SetWindowAttributes. In Graphics.X11.Xlib.Misc, allocaXSetWindowAttributes has been renamed allocaSetWindowAttributes. The FontStruct type has moved from Graphics.X11.Xlib.Types to Graphics.X11.Xlib.Font. The Point, Rectangle, Arc, Segment and Color types in Graphics.X11.Xlib.Types are now proper datatypes rather than synonyms for tuples. They all have a Storable instance. The Byte and Short types from Graphics.X11.Xlib.Types have been removed. The following type synonyms, which had already been marked "Backwards compatibility", have also been removed: ListPoint, ListRectangle, ListArc, ListSegment and ListColor. Eq, Ord, Show, Typeable and Data are now derived for: XEvent, FdSet and TimeZone in Graphics.X11.Xlib.Event, FontStruct in Graphics.X11.Xlib.Font, XErrorEvent, XComposeStatus and XTextProperty in Graphics.X11.Xlib.Misc, Region in Graphics.X11.Xlib.Region, Display, Screen, Visual, GC, GCValues, SetWindowAttributes, Point, Rectangle, Arc, Segment and Color in Graphics.X11.Xlib.Types. Version 2006.8.14. xhtml is a new package, developing on what used to be Text.Html and Text.Html.BlockTable in the base package. Version number 6.6. The internal modules of GHC are now available as a library, package name ghc. The interface has not been designed with use by other programs in mind, so expect the API to vary radically in future releases. An introduction to using the library can be found on the wiki. GHC development now has its own integrated wiki and bug tracker. GHC has now moved to darcs. See the wiki for more details. The sources have moved around a bit within the tree as a result, most notably the GHC sources are no longer kept within a ghc/ subdirectory. The native code generator is now capable of compiling loops, which gets us a big step closer to being able to compile entirely without gcc on well-supported arches.