-This is the root directory for functional-programming tools
-distributed by the Computing Science Department at Glasgow University.
-Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj@microsoft.com> is the ringleader of this
-effort. The tools are:
-
- ghc the Glasgow Haskell compilation system
- hslibs collection of Haskell libraries
- haggis the Haggis GUI toolkit
- happy the Happy Haskell parser generator
- hdirect Haskell interop tool
- green-card a foreign function interface pre-processor for Haskell.
- nofib the NoFib Haskell benchmarking suite
- literate the Glasgow "literate programming" system
- glafp-utils shared utility programs
- mk GNU make setup used by all of fptools
- docs documentation on the installing and using
- the fptools suite.
-
-Components which are always part of a distribution (never stand-alone)
-are "glafp-utils" and "mk" (a configuration system).
-
-Quick start: the following is *supposed* to work
-
- $ ./configure
- $ make boot
- $ make
- $ make install
-
-where 'make' is whatever GNU make is called on your system. The
-configuration script is a standard GNU autoconf script which accepts
-all the normal arguments, eg. --prefix=<blah> to install the package
-somewhere other than /usr/local. Try ./configure --help to get a full
-list of the options.
-
-There is usually an ANNOUNCE* file with any distribution. Please
-consult that, or the <piece>/README file, to find out how to proceed.
+The Glasgow Haskell Compiler
+============================
+
+This is the source tree for GHC, a compiler and interactive
+environment for the Haskell functional programming language.
+
+For more information, visit GHC's web site:
+
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
+
+Information for developers of GHC can be found here:
+
+ http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/
+
+
+Getting the Source
+==================
+
+There are two ways to get a source tree:
+
+ 1. Download source tarballs
+ ---------------------------
+
+ Download the GHC source distribution:
+
+ ghc-<version>-src.tar.bz2
+
+ which contains GHC itself and the "boot" libraries.
+
+ 2. Check out the source code from darcs
+ ---------------------------------------
+
+ The recommended way to get a darcs checkout is to start off by
+ downloading a snapshot with a name like:
+
+ ghc-HEAD-2009-09-09-ghc-corelibs-testsuite.tar.bz2
+
+ from:
+
+ http://darcs.haskell.org/
+
+ and then untar it and bring it up-to-date with:
+
+ $ cd ghc
+ $ ./darcs-all get
+
+
+ Alternatively you can use darcs to get the repos, but it will take a
+ lot longer. First get the GHC darcs repository:
+
+ $ darcs get http://darcs.haskell.org/ghc/
+
+ Then run the darcs-all script in that repository
+ to get the other repositories:
+
+ $ cd ghc
+ $ chmod +x darcs-all
+ $ ./darcs-all get
+
+ This checks out the "boot" packages.
+
+
+Building & Installing
+=====================
+
+For full information on building GHC, see the GHC Building Guide [3].
+Here follows a summary - if you get into trouble, the Building Guide
+has all the answers.
+
+NB. you need GHC installed in order to build GHC, because the compiler
+is itself written in Haskell. For instructions on how to port GHC to a
+new platform, see the Building Guide.
+
+If you're building from darcs sources (as opposed to a source
+distribution) then you also need to install Happy [4] and Alex [5].
+
+For building library documentation, you'll need Haddock [6]. To build
+the compiler documentation, you need a good DocBook XML toolchain and
+dblatex.
+
+Quick start: the following gives you a default build:
+
+ $ perl boot
+ $ ./configure
+ $ make
+ $ make install
+
+The "perl boot" step is only necessary if this is a tree checked out
+from darcs. For source distributions downloaded from GHC's web site,
+this step has already been performed.
+
+These steps give you the default build, which includes everything
+optimised and built in various ways (eg. profiling libs are built).
+It can take a long time. To customise the build, see the file
+HACKING.
+
+
+
+References
+==========
+
+ [1] http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ GHC Home Page
+ [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc GHC Developer's Wiki
+ [3] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building Building Guide
+ [4] http://www.haskell.org/happy/ Happy
+ [5] http://www.haskell.org/alex/ Alex
+ [6] http://www.haskell.org/haddock/ Haddock
+
+
+Contributors
+============
+
+Please see
+
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/contributors.html