[arch-haskell] fwd: Linker Scripts on Arch & GHC

[Don Stewart]

----- Forwarded message from arch-haskell-owner at haskell.org -----

Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:41:20 -0500
From: arch-haskell-owner at haskell.org
To: arch-haskell-owner at haskell.org
Subject: arch-haskell post from aleks.dimitrov at googlemail.com requires approval

As list administrator, your authorization is requested for the
following mailing list posting:

    List:    arch-haskell at haskell.org
    From:    aleks.dimitrov at googlemail.com
    Subject: Linker Scripts on Arch & GHC
    Reason:  Post by non-member to a members-only list

At your convenience, visit:

    http://www.haskell.org/mailman/admindb/arch-haskell
        
to approve or deny the request.

Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 13:47:34 +0100
From: Александър Л. Димитров
	<aleks.dimitrov at googlemail.com>
To: arch-haskell at haskell.org
Subject: Linker Scripts on Arch & GHC

Hello fellow Arch-Haskellers

Sorry for disturbing this peaceful list, but I only recently ran into what
ultimately turned out to be a problem with Arch Linux' layout of system
libraries and GHC's lacking support for linker scripts. My original bug report
to the yi-devel mailing list is rather longish, so I'll just link you to it and
then summarize the problem:

http://tinyurl.com/6qrhnk
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6qrhnk

The problem: terminfo links against /usr/lib/libncurses.so, which on most
distros is a symlink to something that makes more sense (like /lib/libncurses.so.5)
On Arch, this is a linker script instead, which GHC cannot interpret.
It thus fails with a linker error:

  Prelude> :m +System.Console.Terminfo
  Prelude System.Console.Terminfo> term <- setupTerm "xterm"
  Loading package syb ... linking ... done.
  Loading package base-3.0.3.0 ... linking ... done.
  Loading package terminfo-0.2.2.1 ... <command line>: can't load .so/.DLL for: ncurses (/usr/lib/libncurses.so: file too short) 

Gwern then kindly forwarded the Mail to Don (his response is in the above
thread.) The problem with the proposed solution (for now) is that it involves
manually erasing /usr/lib/libncurses.so and replacing it with a symlink. This
solution has obvious flaws, of course. Most importantly, it doesn't really
resolve the issue. There is at least one other package on AUR which is affected:

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=18495

Since I have no clue about linker scripts, and no clue about GHC's linking system
either, I decided to forward the issue here. It's probably unlikely that Arch
will move away from linker scripts (or is it?), so the solution would be
implementing (some level of basic) support in GHC?

Best,
Aleks

PS: and thanks for your current efforts, the Haskell support was the reason for
me to switch from Debian to Arch :-)



From: arch-haskell-request at haskell.org
Subject: confirm 2b4ccbb8a7ce56d307288059b31df5bb6be58cc7

If you reply to this message, keeping the Subject: header intact,
Mailman will discard the held message.  Do this if the message is
spam.  If you reply to this message and include an Approved: header
with the list password in it, the message will be approved for posting
to the list.  The Approved: header can also appear in the first line
of the body of the reply.

----- End forwarded message -----