xref: /dports/lang/ghc/ghc-8.10.7/docs/users_guide/8.10.1-notes.rst

.. _release-8-10-1:

Release notes for version 8.10.1
================================

The significant changes to the various parts of the compiler are listed in the
following sections.


Highlights
----------

- The :extension:`UnliftedNewtypes` extension, allowing ``newtype``\s to be
  wrap types of kind other than ``Type``.

- The :extension:`StandaloneKindSignatures` extension, allowing explicit
  signatures on type constructors.

- A new, :rts-flag:`low-latency garbage collector <-xn>` for the oldest generation.

Full details
------------

Language
~~~~~~~~

- Kind variables are no longer implicitly quantified when an explicit ``forall`` is used, see
  `GHC proposal #24
  <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0024-no-kind-vars.rst>`__.
  :ghc-flag:`-Wimplicit-kind-vars` is now obsolete.

- Kind variables are no longer implicitly quantified in constructor declarations: ::

    data T a        = T1 (S (a :: k)) | forall (b::k). T2 (S b)  -- no longer accepted
    data T (a :: k) = T1 (S (a :: k)) | forall (b::k). T2 (S b)  -- still accepted

- Implicitly quantified kind variables are no longer put in front of other variables: ::

    f :: Proxy (a :: k) -> Proxy (b :: j)

    ghci> :t +v f   -- old order:
    f :: forall k j (a :: k) (b :: j). Proxy a -> Proxy b

    ghci> :t +v f   -- new order:
    f :: forall k (a :: k) j (b :: j). Proxy a -> Proxy b

  This is a breaking change for users of :extension:`TypeApplications`.

- In type synonyms and type family equations, free variables on the RHS are no longer
  implicitly quantified unless used in an outermost kind annotation: ::

    type T = Just (Nothing :: Maybe a)         -- no longer accepted
    type T = Just Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)   -- still accepted

- A new extension :extension:`StandaloneKindSignatures` allows one to explicitly
  specify the kind of a type constructor, as proposed in `GHC proposal #54
  <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0054-kind-signatures.rst>`__: ::

    type TypeRep :: forall k. k -> Type
    data TypeRep a where
      TyInt   :: TypeRep Int
      TyMaybe :: TypeRep Maybe
      TyApp   :: TypeRep a -> TypeRep b -> TypeRep (a b)

  Analogous to function type signatures, a :ref:`standalone kind signature
  <standalone-kind-signatures>` enables polymorphic recursion. This feature is
  a replacement for :extension:`CUSKs`.

  **Note:** The finer points around this feature are subject to change. In particular,
  it is likely that the treatment around :ref:`specified and inferred <inferred-vs-specified>`
  variables may change, to become more like the way term-level type signatures are
  handled.

- GHC now parses visible, dependent quantifiers (as proposed in
  `GHC proposal 35
  <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0081-forall-arrow.rst>`__),
  such as the following: ::

    data Proxy :: forall k -> k -> Type

  See the :ref:`section on explicit kind quantification
  <explicit-kind-quantification>` for more details.

- Type variables in associated type family default declarations can now be
  explicitly bound with a ``forall`` when :extension:`ExplicitForAll` is
  enabled, as in the following example: ::

    class C a where
      type T a b
      type forall a b. T a b = Either a b

  This has a couple of knock-on consequences:

  - Wildcard patterns are now permitted on the left-hand sides of default
    declarations, whereas they were rejected by previous versions of GHC.

  - It used to be the case that default declarations supported occurrences of
    left-hand side arguments with higher-rank kinds, such as in the following
    example: ::

      class C a where
        type T a (f :: forall k. k -> Type)
        type T a (f :: forall k. k -> Type) = f Int

    This will no longer work unless ``f`` is explicitly quantified with a
    ``forall``, like so: ::

      class C a where
        type T a (f :: forall k. k -> Type)
        type forall a (f :: forall k. k -> Type).
             T a f = f Int

- A new extension :extension:`UnliftedNewtypes` that relaxes restrictions
  around what kinds of types can appear inside of the data constructor
  for a ``newtype``. This was proposed in
  `GHC proposal #13 <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0013-unlifted-newtypes.rst>`__.

- A new extension :extension:`ImportQualifiedPost` allows the syntax
  ``import M qualified``, that is, to annotate a module as qualified by
  writing ``qualified`` after the module name.
  This was proposed in `GHC proposal #49 <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0049-module-qualified-syntax.rst>`__.

- New flag :ghc-flag:`-Wderiving-defaults` that controls a warning
  message when both :extension:`DeriveAnyClass` and
  :extension:`GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving` are enabled and no explicit
  deriving strategy is in use. The warning is enabled by default and
  has been present in earlier GHC versions but without the option of
  disabling it.  For example, this code would trigger the warning: ::

    class C a
    newtype T a = MkT a deriving C

- GHC now performs more validity checks on inferred type signatures. One
  consequence of this change is that some programs that used to be accepted
  will no longer compile without enabling the required language extensions.
  For example, in these two modules: ::

    {-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes #-}
    module A where

      foo :: (forall a. a -> a) -> b -> b
      foo f x = f x

    module B where

      import A

      bar = foo

  Notice that ``A`` enables :ghc-flag:`-XRankNTypes`, but ``B`` does not.
  Previous versions of GHC would allow ``bar`` to typecheck, even though its
  inferred type is higher-rank. GHC 8.10 will now reject this, as one must now
  enable :ghc-flag:`-XRankNTypes` in ``B`` to accept the inferred type signature.

- Type family dependencies (also known as injective type families)
  sometimes now need :ghc-flag:`-XUndecidableInstances` in order to be
  accepted. Here is an example::

    type family F1 a = r | r -> a
    type family F2 a = r | r -> a
    type instance F2 [a] = Maybe (F1 a)

  Because GHC needs to look under a type family to see that ``a`` is determined
  by the right-hand side of ``F2``\'s equation, this now needs :ghc-flag:`-XUndecidableInstances`.
  The problem is very much akin to its need to detect some functional dependencies.

- The pattern-match coverage checker received a number of improvements wrt.
  correctness and performance.

  Checking against user-defined COMPLETE pragmas
  "just works" now, so that we could move away from the
  `complicated procedure for disambiguation <https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/glasgow_exts.html#disambiguating-between-multiple-complete-pragmas>`__
  we had in place before.

  Previously, the checker performed really badly on some inputs and had no
  good story for graceful degradation in these situations. These situations
  should occur much less frequently now and degradation happens much more
  smoothly, while still producing useful, sound results (see
  :ghc-flag:`-fmax-pmcheck-models=⟨n⟩`).

Compiler
~~~~~~~~

- The :ghc-flag:`LLVM backend <-fllvm>` of this release is to be used with LLVM 9.

- (x86) Native code generator support for legacy x87 floating point coprocessor
  has been removed. From this point forth GHC will only support floating point
  via SSE2.

- New :ghc-flag:`-Wunused-packages` warning reports unused packages.

- Add new flags :ghc-flag:`-Wunused-record-wildcards` and
  :ghc-flag:`-Wredundant-record-wildcards`  which warn users when they have
  redundant or unused uses of a record wildcard match.

- Calls to ``memset`` and ``memcpy`` are now unrolled more aggressively
  and the produced code is more efficient on x86-64 with added
  support for 64-bit ``MOV``\s. In particular, ``setByteArray#`` and
  ``copyByteArray#`` calls that were not optimized before, now will
  be. See :ghc-ticket:`16052`.

- When loading modules that use :extension:`UnboxedTuples` or
  :extension:`UnboxedSums` into GHCi, it will now automatically enable
  :ghc-flag:`-fobject-code` for these modules and all modules they depend on.
  Before this change, attempting to load these modules into the interpreter
  would just fail, and the only convenient workaround was to enable
  :ghc-flag:`-fobject-code` for all modules. See the
  :ref:`GHCi FAQ <ghci-faq>` for further details.

- The eventlog now contains events for biographical and retainer profiling.
  The biographical profiling events all appear at the end of the eventlog but
  the sample start event contains a timestamp of when the census occurred.
  The retainer profiling events are emitted using the standard events.

- The eventlog now records the cost centre stack on each profiler sample. This
  enables the ``.prof`` file to be partially reconstructed from the eventlog.

- Add new flag :ghc-flag:`-fkeep-going` which makes the compiler
  continue as far as it can despite errors.

- Deprecated flag ``-fwarn-hi-shadowing`` because it was not
  implemented correctly, and appears to be largely unused. This flag
  will be removed in a later version of GHC.

- Windows bindist has been updated to GCC 9.2 and binutils 2.32.  These binaries have
  been patched to no longer have have the ``MAX_PATH`` limit.  Windows users
  should no longer have any issues with long path names.

- Introduce ``DynFlags`` plugins, that allow users to modidy the ``DynFlags``
  that GHC is going to use when processing a set of files, from plugins.
  They can be used for applying tiny configuration changes, registering hooks
  and much more. See the :ref:`user guide <dynflags_plugins>` for
  more details as well as an example.

- Deprecated flag ``-fmax-pmcheck-iterations`` in favor of
  :ghc-flag:`-fmax-pmcheck-models=⟨n⟩`, which uses a completely different mechanism.

- GHC now writes ``.o`` files atomically, resulting in reduced chances
  of truncated files when a build is cancelled or the computer crashes.

  This fixes numerous bug reports in Stack and Cabal where GHC was not
  able to recover from such situations by itself and users reported having
  to clean the build directory.

  Other file types are not yet written atomically.
  Users that observe related problems should report them on
  `GHC issue #14533 <https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/issues/14533>`__.
  This fix is part of the
  `Stack initiative to get rid of persistent build errors due to non-atomic
  file writes across the Haskell tooling ecosystem
  <https://github.com/commercialhaskell/stack/issues/4559>`__.

GHC API
~~~~~~~

- GHC's runtime linker no longer uses global state. This allows programs
  that use the GHC API to safely use multiple GHC sessions in a single
  process, as long as there are no native dependencies that rely on
  global state.

- In the process of making GHC's codebase more modular, many modules have been
  renamed to better reflect the different phases of the compiler. See
  :ghc-ticket:`13009`. Programs that rely on the previous GHC API may use the
  `ghc-api-compat <https://hackage.haskell.org/package/ghc-api-compat>`_ package
  to make the transition to the new interface easier. The renaming process is
  still going on so you must expect other similar changes in the next major
  release.

GHCi
~~~~

- Added a command :ghci-cmd:`:instances` to show the class instances available for a type.

- Added new debugger commands :ghci-cmd:`:disable` and :ghci-cmd:`:enable` to
  disable and re-enable breakpoints.

- Improved command name resolution with option ``!``. For example, ``:k!``
  resolves to ``:kind!``.

Runtime system
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- The runtime system linker now marks loaded code as non-writable (see
  :ghc-ticket:`14069`) on all tier-1 platforms. This is necessary for
  out-of-the-box compatibility with OpenBSD and macOS Catalina (see
  :ghc-ticket:`17353`)

- The RTS API now exposes :ref:`an interface <event_log_output_api>` to
  configure ``EventLogWriters``, allowing eventlog data to be fed to sinks
  other than ``.eventlog`` files.

- A new ``+RTS`` flag ``--disable-delayed-os-memory-return`` was added to make
  for accurate resident memory usage of the program as shown in memory
  usage reporting tools (e.g. the ``RSS`` column in ``top`` and ``htop``).

  This makes it easier to check the real memory usage of Haskell programs.

  Using this new flag is expected to make the program slightly slower.

  Without this flag, the (Linux) RTS returns unused memory "lazily" to the OS.
  This makes the memory available to other processes while also allowing the
  RTS to re-use the memory very efficiently (without zeroing pages) in case it
  needs it again, but common tools will incorrectly show such memory as
  occupied by the RTS (because they do not process the ``LazyFree`` field in
  ``/proc/PID/smaps``).

Template Haskell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- The ``Lift`` typeclass is now levity-polymorphic and has a ``liftTyped``
  method. Previously disallowed instances for unboxed tuples, unboxed sums, and
  primitive unboxed types have also been added. Finally, the code generated by
  :extension:`DeriveLift` has been simplified to take advantage of expression
  quotations.

- Using ``TupleT 1``, ``TupE [exp]``, or ``TupP [pat]`` will now produce unary
  tuples (i.e., involving the ``Unit`` type from ``GHC.Tuple``) instead of
  silently dropping the parentheses. This brings Template Haskell's treatment
  of boxed tuples in line with that of unboxed tuples, as ``UnboxedTupleT``,
  ``UnboxedTupE``, and ``UnboxedTupP`` also produce unary unboxed tuples
  (i.e., ``Unit#``) when applied to only one argument.

- GHC's constraint solver now solves constraints in each top-level group
  sooner. This has practical consequences for Template Haskell, as TH splices
  necessarily separate top-level groups. For example, the following program
  would compile in previous versions of GHC, but not in GHC 8.10: ::

    data T = MkT

    tStr :: String
    tStr = show MkT

    $(return [])

    instance Show T where
      show MkT = "MkT"

  This is because each top-level group's constraints are solved before moving
  on to the next, and since the top-level group for ``tStr`` appears before the
  top-level group that defines a ``Show T`` instance, GHC 8.10 will throw an
  error about a missing ``Show T`` instance in the expression ``show MkT``. The
  issue can be fixed by rearranging the order of declarations. For instance,
  the following will compile: ::

    data T = MkT

    instance Show T where
      show MkT = "MkT"

    $(return [])

    tStr :: String
    tStr = show MkT

- TH splices by default don't generate warnings anymore. For example,
  ``$([d| f :: Int -> void; f x = case x of {} |])`` used to generate a
  pattern-match exhaustivity warning, which now it doesn't. The user can
  activate warnings for TH splices with :ghc-flag:`-fenable-th-splice-warnings`.
  The reason for opt-in is that the offending code might not have been generated
  by code the user has control over, for example the ``singletons`` or ``lens``
  library.

``ghc-prim`` library
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Add new ``bitReverse#`` primops that, for a ``Word`` of 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits,
  reverse the order of its bits e.g. ``0b110001`` becomes ``0b100011``.
  These primitives use optimized machine instructions when available.

``ghc`` library
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

``base`` library
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Build system
~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Countless bug fixes in the new Hadrian build system

- Hadrian now supports a simple key-value configuration language, eliminating
  the need for users to use Haskell to define build configuration. This should
  simplify life for packagers and users alike. See :ghc-ticket:`16769` and the
  documentation in ``hadrian/doc/user-settings.md``.

Included libraries
------------------

The package database provided with this distribution also contains a number of
packages other than GHC itself. See the changelogs provided with these packages
for further change information.

.. ghc-package-list::

    libraries/array/array.cabal:             Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/base/base.cabal:               Core library
    libraries/binary/binary.cabal:           Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/bytestring/bytestring.cabal:   Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/Cabal/Cabal/Cabal.cabal:       Dependency of ``ghc-pkg`` utility
    libraries/containers/containers/containers.cabal:   Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/deepseq/deepseq.cabal:         Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/directory/directory.cabal:     Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/exceptions/exceptions.cabal:   Dependency of ``haskeline`` library
    libraries/filepath/filepath.cabal:       Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    compiler/ghc.cabal:                      The compiler itself
    libraries/ghci/ghci.cabal:               The REPL interface
    libraries/ghc-boot/ghc-boot.cabal:       Internal compiler library
    libraries/ghc-boot-th/ghc-boot-th.cabal: Internal compiler library
    libraries/ghc-compact/ghc-compact.cabal: Core library
    libraries/ghc-heap/ghc-heap.cabal:       GHC heap-walking library
    libraries/ghc-prim/ghc-prim.cabal:       Core library
    libraries/haskeline/haskeline.cabal:     Dependency of ``ghci`` executable
    libraries/hpc/hpc.cabal:                 Dependency of ``hpc`` executable
    libraries/integer-gmp/integer-gmp.cabal: Core library
    libraries/libiserv/libiserv.cabal:       Internal compiler library
    libraries/mtl/mtl.cabal:                 Dependency of ``Cabal`` library
    libraries/parsec/parsec.cabal:           Dependency of ``Cabal`` library
    libraries/pretty/pretty.cabal:           Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/process/process.cabal:         Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/stm/stm.cabal:                 Dependency of ``haskeline`` library
    libraries/template-haskell/template-haskell.cabal:     Core library
    libraries/terminfo/terminfo.cabal:       Dependency of ``haskeline`` library
    libraries/text/text.cabal:               Dependency of ``Cabal`` library
    libraries/time/time.cabal:               Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/transformers/transformers.cabal: Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/unix/unix.cabal:               Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/Win32/Win32.cabal:             Dependency of ``ghc`` library
    libraries/xhtml/xhtml.cabal:             Dependency of ``haddock`` executable