Adding a new GHC version

  • Push new tag to our fork:

    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. E.g.

    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:

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

  • In stackage-content, run

    cd stack && ./update-global-hints.hs ghc-X.Y.Z

    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):

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, run (from here):

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:

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