-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
+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/
+
+
+Building & Installing
+=====================
+
+NB. you need GHC installed in order to build GHC, because the compiler
+is itself written in Haskell. It is possible to build GHC using just
+a C compiler, but we don't recommend this as the normal route. If you
+*really* want to do it this way, then see the Building Guide (link
+below).
+
+You also need a few other tools installed: Happy [4], Alex [5], and
+Haddock [6] (for building library documentation), and a good DocBook
+XML toolchain if you want to build the compiler documentation.
+
+Quick start: the following gives you a default build:
+
+ $ autoreconf
$ ./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.
+The autoreconf 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.
+
+For full information on building GHC, see the GHC Building Guide [3],
+which is also available in source form (DocBook XML) in docs/building.
+
+
+References
+==========
+
+ [1] http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ GHC Home Page
+ [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc GHC Developer's Wiki
+ [3] http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/building/index.html
+ Building Guide
+
+ [4] http://www.haskell.org/happy/ Happy
+ [5] http://www.haskell.org/alex/ Alex
+ [6] http://www.haskell.org/haddock/ Haddock
+
+
+Contributors
+============
-There is usually an ANNOUNCE* file with any distribution. Please
-consult that, or the <piece>/README file, to find out how to proceed.
+Please see
+
+ http://www.haskell.org/ghc/contributors.html