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Adding a new GHC version

  • Push new tag to our fork. Command:

    git clone git@github.com:commercialhaskell/ghc.git
    cd ghc
    git remote add upstream https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc.git
    git fetch upstream
    git push origin ghc-X.Y.Z-release
    
  • Publish a new GitHub release with tag ghc-X.Y.Z-release and same name, with description noting where the binidsts are mirrored from. For example:

    Unless otherwise indicated, bindists are mirrored from https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/
    * FreeBSD bindists are mirrored from http://distcache.FreeBSD.org/local-distfiles/arrowd/stack-bindists
    * musl bindists are mirrored from https://github.com/redneb/ghc-alt-libc/releases
    
  • Download all the relevant GHC bindists from their sources, and upload them to the just-created GitHub release (see stack-setup-2.yaml for the ones we used in the last GHC release).

In the case of macOS, repackage the .xz bindist as a .bz2, since macOS does not include xz by default or provide an easy way to install it.

The script at etc/scripts/mirror-ghc-bindists-to-github.sh will help with this. See the comments within the script.

  • Edit stack-setup-2.yaml and add the new bindists, pointing to the GitHub release version. Be sure to update the content-length and sha1 values.

Before committing, test using a command like:

~~~text
stack --snapshot=ghc-X.Y.Z setup --setup-info-yaml=path/to/stackage-content/stack/stack-setup-2.yaml
~~~

and commit the changes.

Building GHC

NOTE: We are no longer building custom GHC bindists. This section remains for future reference, but GHC's build system has changed substantially since it was written.

TODO: look into using https://github.com/bgamari/ghc-utils/blob/master/rel-eng/bin-release.sh, which is the script used to official bindists.

On systems with a small /tmp, you should set TMP and TEMP to an alternate location.

Setup the system based on these instructions. On Ubuntu (docker run -ti --rm ubuntu:16.04):

apt-get update
apt-get install -y ghc alex happy make autoconf g++ git vim xz-utils automake libtool gcc libgmp-dev ncurses-dev libtinfo-dev python3

On Void Linux (docker run -ti --rm voidlinux/voidlinux bash) command:

xbps-install -S curl gcc make xz ghc autoconf git vim automake gmp-devel ncurses-devel python3 cabal-install
cabal update
cabal install alex happy

For GHC >= 7.10.2, set the GHC_VERSION environment variable to the version to build:

  • export GHC_VERSION=8.2.2
  • export GHC_VERSION=8.2.1
  • export GHC_VERSION=8.0.2
  • export GHC_VERSION=8.0.1
  • export GHC_VERSION=7.10.3a
  • export GHC_VERSION=7.10.2

then, from here, command:

git config --global url."git://github.com/ghc/packages-".insteadOf git://github.com/ghc/packages/
git clone -b ghc-${GHC_VERSION}-release --recursive https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc.git ghc-${GHC_VERSION}
cd ghc-${GHC_VERSION}/
cp mk/build.mk.sample mk/build.mk
sed -i 's/^#BuildFlavour *= *perf$/BuildFlavour = perf/' mk/build.mk
./boot
./configure --enable-tarballs-autodownload
sed -i 's/^TAR_COMP *= *bzip2$/TAR_COMP = xz/' mk/config.mk
make -j$(cat /proc/cpuinfo|grep processor|wc -l)
make binary-dist

GHC 7.8.4 is slightly different. Command:

export GHC_VERSION=7.8.4
git config --global url."git://github.com/ghc/packages-".insteadOf git://github.com/ghc/packages/
git clone -b ghc-${GHC_VERSION}-release --recursive https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc.git ghc-${GHC_VERSION}
cd ghc-${GHC_VERSION}/
./sync-all --extra --nofib -r git://git.haskell.org get -b ghc-7.8
cp mk/build.mk.sample mk/build.mk
sed -i 's/^#BuildFlavour *= *perf$/BuildFlavour = perf/' mk/build.mk
perl boot
./configure
sed -i 's/^TAR_COMP *= *bzip2$/TAR_COMP = xz/' mk/config.mk
make -j$(cat /proc/cpuinfo|grep processor|wc -l)
make binary-dist