nhc98 status


The latest stable release is 1.12. The CVS development tree is now at version 1.13. Bugfixes and important changes to the system are described here for the two most recent released versions.


nhc98 1.13 (CVS development version) features


nhc98 1.12 (2002-03-14) features

  • New: The old hat-trail tool written in Java is now obsolete, replaced by a brand new version written in Haskell.
  • New: There are numerous improvements to the Hat tools, and their command syntax is now simplified and much more uniform.
  • New: All possible tunnels between hat-trail, hat-observe, and hat-detect are now available.
  • New: The first version of the portable Hat transformation is now available. In other words, Hat can now compile simple programs with ghc instead of nhc98.
  • Bugfix: The Time library now has implementations of addToClockTime and diffClockTimes, and tdPicoSec is renamed to tdPicosec.
  • Bugfix: The Numeric library now has implementations of floatToDigits, formatRealFloat, fromRat, and show[EFG]Float.
  • Bugfix: Numerous small problems with building on MacOS X have been ironed out.
  • Bugfix: The IO library did not re-export the PreludeIO definitions.
  • Bugfix: An infix pattern decl of the form a `Foo` (b `Bar` c) = 3 `Foo` (4 `Bar` 5) could not be compiled because the parser lost the explicit bracketing on the LHS.
  • Bugfix: Allow an empty import/export decl with a single stray comma.
  • Bugfix: Fix block-buffered file handles, so that they produce output exactly when the buffer is full.
  • Bugfix: Do not treat `qualified', `hiding', or `interface' as keywords of the language - they are significant only in certain positions.
  • Bugfix: Increase garbage collection counters to 64-bits for correct reports in long-running computations.
  • Bugfix: Accept `instance ClassName (Prelude.->)' in source and interface files.
  • Bugfix: Work around a rare buffer problem in hp2graph.
  • Bugfix: Where an entire module is re-exported, but one of its variables is hidden on import, the hidden variable should not be re-exported.
  • Bugfix: Fix link message "undefined reference to `FN_Ix_46_95_46Unknown_46variable'" when using library Array.
  • Bugfix: Update configuration script (again) to detect ghc-5.02 correctly.

nhc98 1.10 (2001-10-19) features

  • Bugfix: The qualified import/export namespace is now managed much better by the compiler, in accordance with latest revision of the Haskell'98 Report.
  • Bugfix: In the Hat tools, there is a more accurate distinction between top-level identifiers and local identifiers.
  • Bugfix: Numerous small bugfixes in hat-observe and hat-detect, including better pretty-printing of infix expressions and strings.

nhc98 1.08 (2001-09-25) features

  • New: Tunnels from hat-observe to hat-detect and hat-trail, enabling the user to jump directly to something of interest.
  • New: Prototype version of the portable source-to-source transformation is in progress.
  • New: More updates of the the Prelude/Libraries to match the recent revisions of the Haskell'98 Report.
  • Bugfix: Numerous small bugfixes in hat-observe, hat-detect, and hat-trail.
  • Bugfix: You can now have multiple copies of hat-trail running simultaneously.
  • Bugfix: A module with an explicit null export list previously exported everything - now it correctly exports nothing.
  • Bugfix: In multiple equations with identical (n+k) patterns, only the first equation was ever matched, the rest were previously ignored.
  • Bugfix: A negative literal integer in a pattern caused a compiler error if the (-) function was not also used in an expression.
  • Bugfix: An imported named field, used both as a pattern and a selector in the same equation, gave rise to an "Unbound Identifier" error.
  • Bugfix: Fixes random crashes in primitive implementation of putStr.
  • Bugfix: Link options for ncurses (in src/tracer/hat) were in the wrong order.

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 tracing transformation, trace browsing tools (hat tools), time profiler, and common FFI.

component compiler prelude + libraries heap profiling hp2graph GreenCard hmake
quality release release release release release release
last change 2002-03-12 2002-03-05 1997 1996 2001-06-01 2002-02-05
component tracing transformation hat tools time profiling common FFI hi HOOD
quality release beta beta release release release
last change 2002-03-12 2002-03-12 2001-05-18 2001-03-01 2000-11-10 2000-09-15

The latest updates to these pages are available on the WWW from http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/nhc98/

This page last modified: 2002.03.13
York Functional Programming Group