[project @ 1997-09-09 14:22:33 by simonm]

remove redundant RELEASE (users_guide/2-06-notes is used instead)

ghc/RELEASE

-This is the release notes for GHC-2.04, describing what's new since the
-previous release:
-
-GHC 2.04 is a minor upgrade of GHC 2.02 (and the bugfix release,
-2.03), representing work done through May '97. This new release
-adds the following:
-
-* Data constructors can now have polymorphic fields, and ordinary
-  functions can have polymorphic arguments.  Details on
-
-    http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~simonpj/quantification.html
-
-  Existential types coming, but not done yet.
-
-* Pattern guards implemented, see
-	
-   http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~simonpj/guards.html
-
-* Compiler can now compile itself.
-
-* INLINE pragmas honoured (caveat: not yet
-   working on instance-decl methods) 
-
-* Simplifier improvements and better inlining gives
-   better code; not sure how *much* better.
-
-* -dshow-rn-stats print out amusing statistics about what
-  the renamer does.
-
-* When compiling without -O, the renamer (the pass responsible for
-  slurping in interface file and making sure everything is in scope
-  etc.) is now more careful about what it will bring in (especially
-  data constructors and instance declarations). The upshot of this
-  change is that a lot of the (unnecessary) work this pass did in
-  2.02/2.03 is now avoided.
-
-  -fno-prune-tydecls and -fno-prune-instdecls switch off these
-  renamer optimisations. You can try the effect with the renamer
-  statistics. War stories welcome.
-
-* The Heroic Efforts of \tr{Andr\'e Santos <alms@di.ufpe.br>} have
-  been included, AIX/RS6000 is now a supported \tr{ghc}
-  platform! Bug reports concerning this port to (as always)
-  glasgow-haskell-bugs@dcs.gla.ac.uk
-
-* A lot of the bugs that were present in versions 2.02/2.03
-  have been fixed (thanks to everyone that reported bugs!).
-  A list of the reported problems with 2.02/2.03 can be found at
-
-    http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/ghc-bugs.html
-
-    No doubt entries for 2.04 will be added here as well :-)
-
-* This release is available in source format only. To build it you'll
-  need to have either a copy of GHC~0.29 or GHC~2.02/3 installed.
-  For people either doing porting work or work on a (supported) 
-  platform for which there is no GHC binary bundles available, the
-  necessary intermediate files are also available (.hc and .hi files).
-
-  Consult the installation guide for more information on how
-  to build or bootstrap. The guide is included in the distribution
-  (in the fptools/docs directory), and an on-line version of the
-  document can be found at
-
-    http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/fp/software/ghc/ghc-doc/install-guide.html
-
-
-In addition to the above, we've made the following minor changes to
-the GHC libraries/our implementation of the Haskell standard prelude:
-
-* `isPrefixOf' and `isSuffixOf' has been added to `List'
-* The empty type `Void' is now exported from the prelude.
-* `GlaExts' exports the `Lift' data type:
-
-    data Lift a = Lift a
-
-  you might need it someday...
-
-* The `Foreign' interface now also exports the representations
-  for `Word' and `Addr'
-
-* The low-level file handle interface in the POSIX system
-  library has been reworked a bit, most notably is the renaming of
-  `Channel' to `Fd' and the introduction of operations for converting
-  to and from `Handle' and `Fd' values. The changes are:
-
-   --Renamed functions (old name in square brackets)
-   openFd :: FilePath       
-          -> OpenMode 
-          -> Maybe FileMode 
-          -> OpenFileFlags 
-          -> IO Fd
-    -- [openChannel]
-   fdSeek  :: Fd -> SeekMode -> FileOffset -> IO FileOffset 
-    --[seekChannel]
-   fdRead  :: Fd -> ByteCount -> IO (String, ByteCount)     
-    --[readChannel]
-   fdWrite :: Fd -> String -> IO ByteCount                  
-    --[writeChannel]
-   fdClose :: Fd -> IO ()          
-    --[closeChannel]
-   setFdOption :: Fd -> FdOption -> Bool -> IO ()
-    --[setChannelOption]
-   queryFdOption :: Fd -> FdOption -> IO Bool
-    --[queryChannelOption]
-   dup :: Fd -> IO Fd
-    --[dupChannel]
-   dupTo :: Fd -> Fd -> IO ()
-    --[dupChannelTo]
-
-   data FdOption = AppendOnWrite | CloseOnExec | NonBlockingRead
-    --[ChannelOption]
-   getFdStatus :: Fd -> IO FileStatus
-    --[getChannelStatus]
-
-   -- New data structure collecting together misc flags passed to openFd
-   data OpenFileFlags =
-    OpenFileFlags {
-      append    :: Bool,
-      exclusive :: Bool,
-      noctty    :: Bool,
-      nonBlock  :: Bool,
-      trunc     :: Bool
-    }
-
-   --New ops for converting between Fd and Handle:
-   fdToHandle :: Fd -> IO Handle
-   handleToFd :: Handle -> IO Fd
-   intToFd    :: Int -> Fd -- use with care.