[ ghc-Bugs-1115805 ] ghc-6.2.2 requires special configure flag...

Bugs item #1115805, was opened at 2005-02-03 22:19
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by simonmar
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Category: Build System
Group: None
>Status: Closed
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Titus Brown (titus)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: ghc-6.2.2 requires special configure flag...

Initial Comment:
To build from the source at

http://www.haskell.org/ghc/download_ghc_622.html

you need to add the --disable-hc-boot command to 'configure'.  
This isn't mentioned anywhere in the docs, and certainly isn't the 
default config ;).

thanks,
--titus

(on Linux, no previous GHC install)

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>Comment By: Simon Marlow (simonmar)
Date: 2005-02-07 10:59

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First, a bit of background philosophy: GHC is a Haskell
compiler, written in Haskell.  That means you need a Haskell
compiler (GHC in particular) to compile it.  Just like in
order to compile gcc, you need a C compiler to start with. 
When you say "from scratch", you really mean "from C
sources", which is quite an arbitrary choice.

Now, to practical matters:

To partly contradict what I just said, it is possible to
compile GHC with just a C compiler, because GHC can generate
C code.  We use this technique for bootstrapping on new
systems.  It's not easy, it's only moderatly well-supported,
and we don't recommend it if you just want to compile up GHC.

On FreeBSD, the port begins by downloading a small
bootstrapping distribution of GHC, and uses that to build
the sources.

Your point about documentation is well taken.  I'll see what
I can do to make this information easier to find.


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Comment By: Titus Brown (titus)
Date: 2005-02-04 17:10

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Without that flag, configure fails on not finding ghc.

As it turns out, *with* the --disable flag compilation fails if you don't 
have ghc.

So I don't understand how to download the ghc sources and compile it if 
you don't already have ghc.  The documentation was silent on this point 
;).

I ended up installing an old RedHat RPM, compiling ghc, and 
then removing the RPM.

So I'd recommend either describing how to compile ghc *from scratch* 
-- it's gotta be possible, right!? -- and linking that into the docs near the 
beginning, or stating bluntly that it's not easy and neophytes should just 
use a package!  (FWIW, I installed under FreeBSD using ports and Debian 
using apt-get w/o a problem.)

Sorry to be a pain, and apologies if I missed something somewhere - but 
I did spend about 30 minutes looking through the documentation & 
couldn't figure out how to take the ghc-6.2.2 download and build it from 
scratch.




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Comment By: Simon Marlow (simonmar)
Date: 2005-02-04 13:46

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The --disable-hc-boot option should not be required.  What
goes wrong if you don't have it?

Also, you need GHC installed in order to build the sources.

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