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

[Brian Strand]

Simon Marlow wrote:
> On 22 February 2005 20:05, Brian Strand wrote:
>> [ snipped ]
> You actually need the .hc source files too, which don't come with the
> source distribution because they have to be built for each target
> platform.
> 
> That section of the Building Guide wasn't really clear enough on this
> issue, so sorry if that meant you wasted some time.  We've since updated
> the instructions in the Building Guide.
> 
> For compiling GHC on a platform for which you don't already have a GHC
> binary, the Approved Method is to go through the unregisterised
> bootstrap instructions in section 10.2.  It's possible to do a
> registerised bootstrap, which would be shorter, but we haven't tested
> and documented the procedure.
> 
> Cheers,
> 	Simon

Thanks, good to know; I'll read through 10.2 more carefully.  I didn't think 
I'd need to cross-compile x86-linux to x86-linux.  Would it be unreasonable to 
include the unregisterised .hc files with a source distribution (or .hc files 
for "popular" platforms), so that a Haskell novice such as myself could do a 
"./configure && make && make install"?  If configure detected no ghc, perhaps 
it could do the bootstrap automagically.  Or is ghc/Haskell established enough 
that the existence of some Haskell compiler is taken for granted nowadays?

Thanks again to everyone on the list for the helpful advice!
Brian