.. _release-8-4-1:

Release notes for version 8.4.1
===============================

The significant changes to the various parts of the compiler are listed in the
following sections. There have also been numerous bug fixes and performance
improvements over the 8.2.1 release.


Highlights
----------

The highlights, since the 8.2.1 release, are:

-  Many, many bug fixes.

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

Language
~~~~~~~~

Compiler
~~~~~~~~

- The ``configure`` script now no longer accepts ``--with-TOOL`` flags (e.g.
  ``--with-nm``, ``--with-ld``, etc.). Instead, these are taken from environment
  variables, as is typical in ``autoconf`` scripts. For instance,
  ``./configure --with-nm=/usr/local/bin/nm`` turns into
  ``./configure NM=/usr/local/bin/nm``.

- Derived ``Functor``, ``Foldable``, and ``Traversable`` instances are now
  optimized when their last type parameters have phantom roles.
  Specifically, ::

    fmap _ = coerce
    traverse _ x = pure (coerce x)
    foldMap _ _ = mempty

  These definitions of ``foldMap`` and ``traverse`` are lazier than the ones we
  would otherwise derive, as they may produce results without inspecting their
  arguments at all.

  See also :ref:`deriving-functor`, :ref:`deriving-foldable`, and
  :ref:`deriving-traversable`.

- Derived ``Functor``, ``Foldable``, ``Traversable``, ``Generic``, and
  ``Generic1`` instances now have better, and generally better-documented,
  behaviors for types with no constructors. In particular, ::

      fmap _ x = case x of
      foldMap _ _ = mempty
      traverse _ x = pure (case x of)
      to x = case x of
      to1 x = case x of
      from x = case x of
      from1 x = case x of

  The new behavior generally leads to more useful error messages than the
  old did, and lazier semantics for ``foldMap`` and ``traverse``.

- Derived ``Foldable`` instances now derive custom definitions for ``null``
  instead of using the default one. This leads to asymptotically better
  performance for recursive types not shaped like cons-lists, and allows ``null``
  to terminate for more (but not all) infinitely large structures.

- Derived instances for types with no constructors now have appropriate
  arities: they take all their arguments before producing errors. This may not
  be terribly important in practice, but it seems like the right thing to do.
  Previously, we generated ::

      (==) = error ...

Now we generate ::

      _ == _ = error ...

- Lots of other bugs. See `Trac
   <https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/query?status=closed&milestone=8.4.1&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=component&order=priority>`_
   for a complete list.

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

- Function ``hs_add_root()`` was removed. It was a no-op since GHC-7.2.1
  where module initialisation stopped requiring a call to ``hs_add_root()``.

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

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