Glasgow Haskell on different versions of Linux

Simon Marlow simonmar at microsoft.com
Mon Jun 14 09:32:56 EDT 2004


On 09 June 2004 20:09, Christian Maeder wrote:

> I wrote:
>>> since version 6.2 we have 2 binary distributions for (generic)
>>> linux: for glibc 2.2 and glibc 2.3
>> 
>> Maybe this is no longer necessary. I've produced an installation
>> (under glibc 2.2) that runs under glibc 2.2 and glibc 2.3.
> 
> I've now also successfully installed ghc-6.2.1 from source under glibc
> 2.3 that works under glibc 2.2, too.
> 
>> As also Volker Stolz suggested I've changed, after calling
>> ./configure, a line in "mk/config.h" from 
>> 
>> #define HAVE_CTYPE_H 1
>> 
>> to
>> 
>> /* #undef HAVE_CTYPE_H */
>> 
>> 
>> I'll try the same trick under glibc 2.3 later.
> 
> Yes, that basically did it. Thus the glibc 2.3 version (without
> ctype.h) should be sufficient as binary distribution in the future.

We want to support glibc 2.2.  However, given that it is no longer the
predominant flavour of glibc around, we don't want to put a lot of
effort into supporting it, or to compromise our support for glibc 2.3.

Trying to avoid ctype.h seems pretty fragile.  I don't understand why
undefining HAVE_CTYPE_H makes things work, and whether it will break
anything else.  "Avoid ctype.h" is yet another global invariant, and
I've learned to avoid those where possible.

This strikes me as simply not the right way to go.  We can't be sure
that there aren't other binary incompatibilies between glibc 2.2 and
2.3.  The right way is just to have separate installations for the two
systems.

Cheers,
	Simon


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