

Haskell Platform 2012.2.0.0 released - includes GHC 7.4.1 - MtnViewMark
http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/?2012.2.0.0

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pnathan
The Haskell Platform landing page is consistently beautiful. One of the
prettiest landing pages I've come across. It lends a great deal of credibility
to a technology when the up-front page looks like it was taken care of
diligently. Contrast that to a page with only some text, a tarball link, and a
mailing list (no names given, surely the reader can think of an example).

I applaud the Haskell community for taking care of the non-technicals on their
flagship download.

~~~
tikhonj
I really like how they tie each release to a season. This way the page for
each version is visually different from the last version (so it's easy to
realize it was updated), but they still have a consistent theme.

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currywurst
I'm still tippy-toeing in the Haskell waters .. but the availability of
seemingly mature "elbow-grease" tools like profilers, debuggers and code
coverage evaluators is what attracts me to Haskell.

What is the state of the art for the new kids on the block like Clojure, Scala
and Go ?

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fiatmoney
Clojure, at least, can use most of the Java profiling & debugging tools. Under
the hood, the class names shown get a little baroque but it's still
recognizably relatable to the source.

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njs12345
Release notes here:
[http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.4.1/html/users_guide/relea...](http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.4.1/html/users_guide/release-7-4-1.html)

Some good stuff in this release --- preliminary ARM support is exciting for
obvious reasons, and the new kinds flags are fun if you like that sort of
thing (see <http://blog.omega-prime.co.uk/?p=127> for some examples)

~~~
aristidb
Those are actually the release notes for GHC (the "standard" Haskell compiler)
itself, which is shipped as part of the platform, but is not it.

The platform is basically a bundle of GHC, cabal and some other build tools,
and some "sanctioned" Haskell libraries.

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zmanian
Had a fairly painless upgrade from the previous haskell platform.

The big win for everyone is that GHC 7.4.1 support in the Haskell platform
opens up doing "cabal install" for lots of cutting edge packages like
accelerate.

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SkyMarshal
For anyone using Debian or a derivative and who wants to build from source
and/or install without using the package manager, here's one way using Debian
_update-alternatives_ tool:

[https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/h...](https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/haskell)

TLDR: Install GHC (binary) to a custom location like /opt/haskell/ghc, then
add it to the system with the Debian _update-alternatives_ tool, repeat with
Haskell Platform. Only difference is you build Platform from source. _update-
alternatives_ scripts included for both.

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eddie_the_head
Can anyone from this project or knowledgable about it comment on why Haskell
Platform isn't available for Ubuntu 10.04 which is a LTS release?

~~~
dons
HP on Ubuntu is listed here :
<http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=haskell-platform>

In the case of Ubuntu, they're just downstream consumers of the Debian Haskell
packaging team's efforts, and as a result are sometimes out of sync,
<http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=haskell-platform>

Lucid Lynx was announced in 2009, and at there time there was no Haskell
Platform in Debian to adopt. More recent Ubuntu versions support the HP,
however.

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tferris
Anyone using Haskell and why?

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ericssmith
Parsec was Haskell's 'killer app' for me, but I tend to do most tasks in it
now that involve some kind of data processing. Economical syntax, strong
support for function composition, pattern matching, and type classes are the
main draws for me. I have also learned to appreciate enforced purity and the
abundance of operators, two of the biggest hurdles coming from stateful,
imperative, mainstream languages. I prefer a development style in which small,
single-purpose 'components' can be built up in the REPL and plugged together.
Haskell is very well suited to this. Especially once I realized the GHC
compiler was really telling me useful things and not just trying to piss me
off. I have a love/hate relationship with lazy evaluation.

~~~
fusiongyro
Nine times out of ten, when I'm done using Parsec I find myself wishing I were
using Happy and Alex instead. Parsec seems to be powerful and liberating to a
lot of people but I guess I had lex and yacc drilled into me hard enough that
I haven't managed to let go yet.

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LesZedCB
What is the defacto IDE/editor for Haskell? I've messed around with Leksah,
which looks like it's pretty nice, but I have absolutely no idea how it works.

~~~
fusiongyro
There really isn't a de-facto IDE/editor. The Emacs support continues to
improve; Vim support is quite strong. There's EclipseFP for Eclipse. I have
used Leksah and like it, but usually use TextMate.

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tilltheis
Why does it open a new Safari window after the installation? That's pretty
annoying but besides that I'm happy about every new version.

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MtnViewMark
Because Apple's installer framework has the option to open a document after
installation is complete: We have it open the start.html page. Alas, Apple's
framework always opens web pages with Safari, no matter what the user has set
as their default browser. I don't know why, since it is just the standard
"open" action - suspect it has to do with the Installer running as root. If
anyone knows a work around, I'm all ears!

~~~
tilltheis
Maybe you could ask the user if it's okay to open the page after the
installation.

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gatlin
Links on the website need to be updated.

~~~
MtnViewMark
If you mean the Haskell Platform site, try refreshing in your browser.

