GHC 6.4 release candidates available (breakage on suse 9.2 x86 or x86-64)

[Brian Strand]

Anders Höckersten wrote:
...
> There are some debian packages of ghc 6.2.2 and related stuff for amd64 
> located here: 
> http://debian-amd64.alioth.debian.org/pure64/pool/unstable/main/amd64/g/ghc6/ 
> 
> 
> Hopefully you can find some way to convert these to a format you can 
> install (there are programs for converting debian packages to rpms I 
> think, but I can't remember what they are called - google is your friend).
> 
> After installing this binary, bootstrapping an (at least unregistered) 
> amd64 ghc 6.4 should be possible.
> 
> Cheers,
> Anders

Thanks a lot!  For anyone who runs into the same problem, here is what I 
did:

1. Converted to an rpm via "alien -r ghc6_6.2.2-3_amd64.deb"
2. Installed the resulting rpm.
3. When I tried to run ghc6, I got

/usr/lib/ghc-6.2.2 # /usr/bin/ghc6
ghc-6.2.2: Can't find package.conf as 
/usr/lib/ghc-6.2.2/ghc/driver/package.conf.inplace

Other similar errors cropped up while trying to bootstrap.  So, some 
crude symlink hackery:

cd /usr/lib/ghc-6.2.2
ln -s . ghc
ln -s . driver
ln -s package.conf.shipped package.conf.inplace
# now we have a /usr/lib/ghc-6.2.2/ghc/driver/package.conf.inplace

mkdir utils
ln -s .. utils/unlit
# now we have a /usr/lib/ghc-6.2.2/utils/unlit/unlit

ln -s ghc6 /usr/bin/ghc
# so ./configure finds ghc

This has gotten me quite a ways into the 6.2.2 compile; I'm still 
waiting to see if it completes successfully.

Brian