Add 9.14.1-alpha1 release blog post

content/ghc-9.14.1-alpha1/index.md

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+---
+authors: ["Ben Gamari"]
+title: "GHC 9.14.1-alpha1 is now available"
+date: 2025-08-19
+categories: ["GHC"]
+tags: ["Release"]
+---
+
+The GHC developers are very pleased to announce the availability of the
+first alpha prerelease of GHC 9.14.1. Binary distributions, source
+distributions, and documentation are available at [downloads.haskell.org][].
+
+GHC 9.14 will bring a number of new features and improvements, including:
+
+* Significant improvements in specialisation:
+
+   * The `SPECIALISE` pragma now allows use of type application syntax
+
+   * The `SPECIALISE` pragma can be used to specialise for expression arguments
+     as well as type arguments.
+
+   * Specialisation is now considerably more reliable in the presence of
+     `newtype`s
+
+   * the specialiser is now able to produce specialisations with
+     polymorphic typeclass constraints, considerably broadening its scope.
+
+* Significant improvements in the GHCi debugger
+
+* Record fields can be defined to be non-linear when `LinearTypes` is enabled.
+
+* `RequiredTypeArgments` can now be used in more contexts
+
+* SSE/AVX support in the x86 native code generator backend 
+
+* A major update of the Windows toolchain
+
+* ... and many more
+
+A full accounting of changes can be found in the [release notes][]. Given the
+many specialisation improvements and their potential for regression, we would
+very much appreciate testing and performance characterisation on downstream
+workloads.
+
+Due to unexpected complications, this initial prerelease comes a bit later than
+expected. Consequently, we expect to have three condensed alphas prior to the
+release candidate. We expect the next alpha
+will come the week of 9 Sept. 2025, while the third will come 23 Sept. 2025,
+with the release candidate coming 7 Oct. 2025.
+
+We would like to thank the Zw3rk stake pool,
+Well-Typed, Mercury, Channable, Tweag I/O, Serokell, SimSpace, the Haskell
+Foundation, and other anonymous contributors whose on-going financial
+and in-kind support has facilitated GHC maintenance and release
+management over the years. Finally, this release would not have been
+possible without the hundreds of open-source contributors whose work
+comprise this release.
+
+As always, do give this release a try and open a [ticket][] if you see
+anything amiss.
+
+
+[downloads.haskell.org]: https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.14.1-alpha1
+[release notes]: https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/9.14.1-alpha1/docs/users_guide/9.14.1-notes.html
+[ticket]: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/homepage/-/issues/new
+