[GHC DevOps Group] FreeBSD in Tier 1

[Páli Gábor János]

2017-10-10 8:05 GMT+02:00 Boespflug, Mathieu <m at tweag.io>:
> the README in GHC HEAD does not mention any BSD in any way. Is there
> some other platform specific README I should be aware of?

When I documented this, I falled back to the traditional solution,
i.e. I added a page on the GHC developer wiki about it.  That is
basically the page you have already found there.

> As it is, I did have gcc6 from ports installed before building GHC,
> but clearly the standard `./boot && ./configure && gmake` instructions
> were insufficient to make use of that.

This will not probably work indeed.  FreeBSD juggles with multiple
compiler toolchains and libraries, some of them is in the base system
(i.e. available by default), some of them is in the Ports Collection
(i.e. one has to install explicitly), so setting CC is highly
preferred on calling the configure script.  In addition to that,
FreeBSD does not follow the usual GNU/Linux file system layout but
aims to separate the files of base system from the files of
third-party applications (elements of the Port Collection).  In
result, it stores many non-standard headers, libraries, and binaries
under /usr/local (but this could be different), which could also
useful to be specified.

> But they are marked in bold for "developers and early adopters", not
> any user that checks out the GHC source code.

I considered anybody who checks out the GHC source code an "developer
or early adopter" as regular users should just `pkg install ghc`
(install GHC from the FreeBSD package repository) and should not care
about anything else.

Anyhow, the `README.md` in the GHC git repository used to had (perhaps
still has) this sentence: "Before building GHC you may need to install
some other tools and libraries.  See, Setting up your system for
building GHC [on the wiki]".

> Which I guess should be no surprise, since Gábor points out
> down-thread that the old FreeBSD build bot is no longer in service. So
> just like the unreliable presence of the OS X build bots, let's do
> away with them! (by using hosted infrastructure instead)

As far as I am aware, there were already plans to run the build bots
under the umbrella of haskell.org or GHC HQ.  Ian Lynagh has
implemented a nice CI service in Haskell, that is what I continued to
use, but I agree that there should be something again that is
officially maintained.  If I just got some access to some VM with
FreeBSD that I would have to look after to keep the respective bots in
a good order, it would be happy to do that.  In absence of that, I had
to run my own solution, but will not really work in the long run.