newbie: building ghc

[Duncan Coutts]

On Wed, 2006-03-15 at 17:22 -0500, Mark Greenbank wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Sorry for the newbie question ... I'm trying to build the compiler and
> I'm getting the following error:
> 
> [root at quark ghc-6.4.1]# ./configure --prefix=/usr/pkg
> checking build system type... i386-pc-solaris2.10
> checking host system type... i386-pc-solaris2.10
> checking target system type... i386-pc-solaris2.10
> Canonicalised to: i386-unknown-solaris2
> checking for path to top of build tree... /usr/pkg/src/ghc-6.4.1
> checking for ghc... no
> checking for nhc... no
> checking for nhc98... no
> checking for hbc... no
> configure: error: GHC is required unless bootstrapping from .hc files.
> 
> Does this somehow mean that I need the compiler in order to build the
> compiler?

Generally yes.

You should start with a binary version of ghc and if you like you can
then use that to rebuild from source (or to build a newer version).

This is how it works with most of the source based distros (eg Gentoo,
FreeBSD). Another possibility is to boot from .hc files but if there is
a binary available for your platform then that's the easiest method.

I see you're using Solaris on x86. I recall someone on this list having
got it bootstrapped before. If no one does have a build available then
you'll need to follow these porting instructions:
http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/6.4.1/html/building/sec-porting-ghc.html#sec-booting-from-hc

It should be possible to make it work since there are builds for Solaris
on sparc and for other OSs on x86 and x86_64.

Duncan