pre-710 compatibility stuff

[Thomas Tuegel]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 10:00 AM, Herbert Valerio Riedel
<hvriedel at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2015-10-24 at 15:05:44 +0200, Thomas Tuegel wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> MIN_VERSION_base is defined by Cabal, so it is not available during
>> bootstrapping.
>
> yes, and that's why we have a cabal_macros_boot.h in GHC's build-system
> for bootstrapping purposes,
>
>   http://git.haskell.org/ghc.git/blob/HEAD:/utils/ghc-cabal/cabal_macros_boot.h

There is also the case of bootstrapping outside of GHC. For the sake
of distro packagers, one should be able to run:

$ runhaskell Setup.hs configure
$ runhaskell Setup.hs build
$ runhaskell Setup.hs install

from an unpacked Cabal tarball, outside the GHC tree, and without any
special options. It's worth discussing if we want to continue to
support that mode of installation.

> Moreover, Edward has a patch for GHC to have native
> MIN_VERSION_... support in GHC:
>
>   https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/10970
>
>   https://phabricator.haskell.org/D1349

That's good to know! I look forward to its inclusion.

-- 
Thomas Tuegel