Editing Benchmarks Game (section)

== Submitting guide ==

Now that GHC 8.8.1 is installed on the Benchmarks Game servers, please make full use of it! There is an immediate need for a complete revamp of all the entries to fix and optimise them for this version of GHC. Please pick a program and contribute!

GHC change information since version 8.0.1 can be found on the [https://www.haskell.org/ghc/blog.html GHC Developer Blog]

GHC 6.10 gave us the option of
* parallel garbage collector

GHC 6.8 gave us the option of 
* `par`
* SMP runtime
* new regex libs
* lots of other stuff

GHC 6.6 gave the option of using:
* [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/bytestring/docs/Data-ByteString.html Data.ByteString]
* [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/regex-posix/docs/Text-Regex-Posix-ByteString-Lazy.html Text.Regex.*]
* [https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.4.4/docs/users_guide/exts/strict.html bang patterns]
which should greatly improve clarity and brevity. Line count is not
significant now (code is gzipped to determine size), so aim for maximum
clarity.

Suggested best practices for submitting an entry to the Benchmarks Game include:

* Posting the proposed code to the community to allow for a best of breed entry. Proposed code is here on the wiki and often in the Haskell-cafe mailing list. This has already helped improve the submitted code.

* Provide complete performance measurements against the current best entry.

* Creating clean, functional-style code or fast, imperative-style code. There are multiple versions ("GHC", "GHC#2", "GHC#3", "GHC#4") of GHC codes on many of the benchmarks with no clear rational for the different versions. It'd be better to have entries for "GHC" be clean, short, functional code and entries for "GHC-#2" be fastest, probably-ugliest code.

* When you submit via the trac system, record in the wiki section for that entry a link to the submission.

* Check for gzip file size before you submit -- lots of points to be had there.

* Try different compile options and the other ideas on the [[Performance/GHC]] page.
 
<haskell>
--
-- The Computer Language Benchmarks Game, https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/
-- Haskell Benchmarks Game entries, https://wiki.haskell.org/Benchmarks_Game
-- 
-- Simon Marlow
-- Shortened by Don Stewart
--
</haskell>