binary installations installation, of binaries Installing from binary distributions is easiest, and recommended! (Why binaries? Because GHC is a Haskell compiler written in Haskell, so you've got to bootstrap it somehow. We provide machine-generated C-files-from-Haskell for this purpose, but it's really quite a pain to use them. If you must build GHC from its sources, using a binary-distributed GHC to do so is a sensible way to proceed. For the other fptools programs, many are written in Haskell, so binary distributions allow you to install them without having a Haskell compiler.) This guide is in several parts: Installing on Unix-a-likes (). Installing on Windows (). The layout of installed files (). You don't need to know this to install GHC, but it's useful if you are changing the implementation. For certain platforms, we provide GHC binaries packaged using the native package format for the platform. This is likely to be by far the best way to install GHC for your platform if one of these packages is available, since dependencies will automatically be handled and the package system normally provides a way to uninstall the package at a later date. We generally provide the following packages: RedHat or SuSE Linux/x86 RPM source & binary packages for RedHat and SuSE Linux (x86 only) are available for most major releases. Debian Linux/x86 Debian packages for Linux (x86 only), also for most major releases. FreeBSD/x86 On FreeBSD/x86, GHC can be installed using either the ports tree (cd /usr/ports/lang/ghc && make install) or from a pre-compiled package available from your local FreeBSD mirror. Other platform-specific packages may be available, check the GHC download page for details. bundles of binary stuff Binary distributions come in “bundles,” one bundle per file called bundle-platform.tar.gz. (See the building guide for the definition of a platform.) Suppose that you untar a binary-distribution bundle, thus: % cd /your/scratch/space % gunzip < ghc-x.xx-sun-sparc-solaris2.tar.gz | tar xvf - Then you should find a single directory, ghc-version, with the following structure: binary distribution, layout directory layout (binary distributions) Makefile.in the raw material from which the Makefile will be made (). configure the configuration script (). README Contains this file summary. INSTALL Contains this description of how to install the bundle. ANNOUNCE The announcement message for the bundle. NEWS release notes for the bundle—a longer version of ANNOUNCE. For GHC, the release notes are contained in the User Guide and this file isn't present. bin/platform contains platform-specific executable files to be invoked directly by the user. These are the files that must end up in your path. lib/platform/ contains platform-specific support files for the installation. Typically there is a subdirectory for each fptools project, whose name is the name of the project with its version number. For example, for GHC there would be a sub-directory ghc-x.xx/ where x.xx is the version number of GHC in the bundle. These sub-directories have the following general structure: libHSstd.a etc: supporting library archives. ghc-iface.prl etc: support scripts. import/ Interface files (.hi) for the prelude. include/ A few C #include files. share/ contains platform-independent support files for the installation. Again, there is a sub-directory for each fptools project. html/ contains HTML documentation files (one sub-directory per project). OK, so let's assume that you have unpacked your chosen bundles. What next? Well, you will at least need to run the configureconfigure script by changing directory into the top-level directory for the bundle and typing ./configure. That should convert Makefile.in to Makefile. installing in-place in-place installation You can now either start using the tools in-situ without going through any installation process, just type make in-place to set the tools up for this. You'll also want to add the path which make will now echo to your PATH environment variable. This option is useful if you simply want to try out the package and/or you don't have the necessary privileges (or inclination) to properly install the tools locally. Note that if you do decide to install the package `properly' at a later date, you have to go through the installation steps that follow. To install a package, you'll have to do the following: Edit the Makefile and check the settings of the following variables: directories, installation installation directories platform the platform you are going to install for. bindir the directory in which to install user-invokable binaries. libdir the directory in which to install platform-dependent support files. datadir the directory in which to install platform-independent support files. infodir the directory in which to install Emacs info files. htmldir the directory in which to install HTML documentation. dvidir the directory in which to install DVI documentation. The values for these variables can be set through invocation of the configureconfigure script that comes with the distribution, but doing an optical diff to see if the values match your expectations is always a Good Idea. Instead of running configure, it is perfectly OK to copy Makefile.in to Makefile and set all these variables directly yourself. But do it right! Run make install. This should work with ordinary Unix make—no need for fancy stuff like GNU make. rehash (t?csh or zsh users), so your shell will see the new stuff in your bin directory. Once done, test your “installation” as suggested in . Be sure to use a -v option, so you can see exactly what pathnames it's using. If things don't work as expected, check the list of known pitfalls in the building guide. link, installed as ghc When installing the user-invokable binaries, this installation procedure will install GHC as ghc-x.xx where x.xx is the version number of GHC. It will also make a link (in the binary installation directory) from ghc to ghc-x.xx. If you install multiple versions of GHC then the last one “wins”, and “ghc” will invoke the last one installed. You can change this manually if you want. But regardless, ghc-x.xx should always invoke GHC version x.xx. bundles, binary There are plenty of “non-basic” GHC bundles. The files for them are called ghc-x.xx-bundle-platform.tar.gz, where the platform is as above, and bundle is one of these: prof: Profiling with cost-centres. You probably want this. profiling bundles bundles, profiling par: Parallel Haskell features (sits on top of PVM). You'll want this if you're into that kind of thing. parallel bundles bundles, parallel gran: The “GranSim” parallel-Haskell simulator (hmm… mainly for implementors). bundles, gransim gransim bundles ticky: “Ticky-ticky” profiling; very detailed information about “what happened when I ran this program”—really for implementors. bundles, ticky-ticky ticky-ticky bundles One likely scenario is that you will grab two binary bundles—basic, and profiling. We don't usually make the rest, although you can build them yourself from a source distribution. The various GHC bundles are designed to be unpacked into the same directory; then installing as per the directions above will install the whole lot in one go. Note: you must at least have the basic GHC binary distribution bundle, these extra bundles won't install on their own. testing a new GHC The way to do this is, of course, to compile and run this program (in a file Main.hs): main = putStr "Hello, world!\n" Compile the program, using the -v (verbose) flag to verify that libraries, etc., are being found properly: % ghc -v -o hello Main.hs Now run it: % ./hello Hello, world! Some simple-but-profitable tests are to compile and run the notorious nfibnfib program, using different numeric types. Start with nfib :: Int -> Int, and then try Integer, Float, Double, Rational and perhaps the overloaded version. Code for this is distributed in ghc/misc/examples/nfib/ in a source distribution. For more information on how to “drive” GHC, read on... Getting the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (post 5.02) to run on Windows platforms is a snap: the Installshield does everything you need. To install GHC, use the following steps: Download the Installshield setup.exe from the GHC download page haskell.org. Run setup.exe. On Windows, all of GHC's files are installed in a single directory. If you choose ``Custom'' from the list of install options, you will be given a choice about where this directory is; otherwise it will be installed in c:/ghc/ghc-version. The executable binary for GHC will be installed in the bin/ sub-directory of the installation directory you choose. (If you have already installed the same version of GHC, Installshield will offer to "modify", or "remove" GHC. Choose "remove"; then run setup.exe a second time. This time it should offer to install.) When installation is complete, you should find GHCi and the GHC documentation are available in your Start menu under "Start/Programs/Glasgow Haskell Compiler". The final dialogue box from the install process reminds you where the GHC binary has been installed (usually c:/ghc/ghc-version/bin/. If you want to invoke GHC from a command line, add this to your PATH environment variable. GHC needs a directory in which to create, and later delete, temporary files. It uses the standard Windows procedure GetTempPath() to find a suitable directory. This procedure returns: The path in environment variable TMP, if TMP is set. Otherwise, the path in environment variable TEMP, if TEMP is set. Otherwise, there is a per-user default which varies between versions of Windows. On NT and XP-ish versions, it might be: c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp The main point is that if you don't do anything GHC will work fine; but if you want to control where the directory is, you can do so by setting TMP or TEMP. To test the fruits of your labour, try now to compile a simple Haskell program: bash$ cat main.hs module Main(main) where main = putStrLn "Hello, world!" bash$ ghc -o main main.hs .. bash$ ./main Hello, world! bash$ You do not need the Cygwin toolchain, or anything else, to install and run GHC. An installation of GHC requires about 140M of disk space. To run GHC comfortably, your machine should have at least 64M of memory. At the moment, GHC installs in a fixed place (c:/ghc/ghc-x.yy, but once it is installed, you can freely move the entire GHC tree just by copying the ghc-x.yy directory. (You may need to fix up the links in "Start/Programs/Glasgow Haskell Compiler" if you do this.) It is OK to put GHC tree in a directory whose path involves spaces. However, don't do this if you use want to use GHC with the Cygwin tools, because Cygwin can get confused when this happpens. We havn't quite got to the bottom of this, but so far as we know it's not a problem with GHC itself. Nevertheless, just to keep life simple we usually put GHC in a place with a space-free path. I'm having trouble with symlinks. Symlinks only work under Cygwin (), so binaries not linked to the Cygwin DLL, in particular those built for Mingwin, will not work with symlinks. I'm getting “permission denied” messages from the rm or mv. This can have various causes: trying to rename a directory when an Explorer window is open on it tends to fail. Closing the window generally cures the problem, but sometimes its cause is more mysterious, and logging off and back on or rebooting may be the quickest cure. This section describes what files get installed where. You don't need to know it if you are simply installing GHC, but it is vital information if you are changing the implementation. GHC is installed in two directory trees: Library directory, known as $(libdir), holds all the support files needed to run GHC. On Unix, this directory is usually something like /usr/lib/ghc/ghc-5.02. Binary directory known as $(bindir), holds executables that the user is expected to invoke. Notably, it contains ghc and ghci. On Unix, this directory can be anywhere, but is typically something like /usr/local/bin. On Windows, however, this directory must be $(libdir)/bin. When GHC runs, it must know where its library directory is. It finds this out in one of two ways: $(libdir) is passed to GHC using the -B flag. On Unix (but not Windows), the installed ghc is just a one-line shell script that invokes the real GHC, passing a suitable -B flag. [All the user-supplied flags follow, and a later -B flag overrides an earlier one, so a user-supplied one wins.] On Windows (but not Unix), if no -B flag is given, GHC uses a system call to find the directory in which the running GHC executable lives, and derives $(libdir) from that. [Unix lacks such a system call.] That is why $(bindir) must be $(libdir)/bin. The binary directory, $(bindir) contains user-visible executables, notably ghc and ghci. You should add it to your $PATH On Unix, the user-invokable ghc invokes $(libdir)/ghc-version, passing a suitable -B flag to tell ghc-version where $(libdir) is. Similarly ghci, except the extra flag --interactive is passed. On Win32, the user-invokable ghc binary is the Real Thing (no intervening shell scripts or .bat files). Reason: we sometimes invoke GHC with very long command lines, and cmd.exe (which executes .bat files) truncates them. Similarly ghci is a C wrapper program that invokes ghc --interactive (passing on all other arguments), not a .bat file. The layout of the library directory, $(libdir) is almost identical on Windows and Unix, as follows. Differences between Windows and Unix are noted thus [Win32 only] and are commented below. $(libdir)/ package.conf GHC package configuration ghc-usage.txt Message displayed by ghc ––help bin/ [Win32 only] User-visible binaries ghc.exe ghci.exe unlit Remove literate markup touchy.exe [Win32 only] perl.exe [Win32 only] gcc.exe [Win32 only] ghc-x.xx GHC executable [Unix only] ghc-split Asm code splitter ghc-asm Asm code mangler gcc-lib/ [Win32 only] Support files for gcc specs gcc configuration cpp0.exe gcc support binaries as.exe ld.exe crt0.o Standard ..etc.. binaries libmingw32.a Standard ..etc.. libraries *.h Include files imports/ GHC interface files std/*.hi 'std' library lang/*.hi 'lang' library ..etc.. include/ C header files StgMacros.h GHC-specific ..etc... header files mingw/*.h [Win32 only] Mingwin header files libHSrts.a GHC library archives libHSstd.a libHSlang.a ..etc.. HSstd1.o GHC library linkables HSstd2.o (used by ghci, which does HSlang.o not grok .a files yet) Note that: $(libdir) also contains support binaries. These are not expected to be on the user's PATH, but and are invoked directly by GHC. In the Makefile system, this directory is also called $(libexecdir), but you are not free to change it. It must be the same as $(libdir). We distribute gcc with the Win32 distribution of GHC, so that users don't need to install gcc, nor need to care about which version it is. All gcc's support files are kept in $(libdir)/gcc-lib/. Similarly, we distribute perl and a touch replacement (touchy.exe) with the Win32 distribution of GHC. The support programs ghc-split and ghc-asm are Perl scripts. The first line says #!/bin/perl; on Unix, the script is indeed invoked as a shell script, which invokes Perl; on Windows, GHC invokes $(libdir)/perl.exe directly, which treats the #!/bin/perl as a comment. Reason: on Windows we want to invoke the Perl distributed with GHC, rather than assume some installed one.