Which ghc versions can build ghc-6.8.1?

[Chris Kuklewicz]

Gregory Wright wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm the process of updating MacPort's ghc to 6.8.1 and adding support for
> Leopard (OS X 10.5) and have been having] some trouble.

Great.  I am using 10.5 on a PPC

You ought to read the ongoing saga at
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/1843
In general, we cannot yet make ghc-6.8.1 on a powerpc running OS X 10.5 (XCode 3.0).

My guess is that there is more than one fatal issue.

> The first task is just to get 6.8.1 running on Tiger (10.4).  On PPC, I use
> ghc 6.4 as a bootstrap compiler and on Intel ghc 6.6.  I am traveling with
> only a PPC PowerBook G4/OS X 10.4, so that's all I've been able to
> test with.

There are two binaries of ghc 6.8.1 for Tiger (10.4) posted on the site, so if
you are _really_ hard up for a bootstrap....

> The problem is that ghc 6.4 can not build 6.8.1.  It seems related to
> Cabal.

The latest Cabal is 1.2 (well, 1.2.2.0) and allows for packages to compile under
6.8 and 6.6 and hopefully 6.4.  Any attempt to support more than one of those
ghc versions ought to be equipped with Cabal 1.2

> Using the 6.4 bootstrap compiler (with the version of Cabal that it shipped
> with) I get:

snip

> If I upgrade the bootstrap compiler's Cabal to 1.1.6.2, the build still
> fails.

Why only upgrade to 1.1.6.2 and not 1.2.whatever ?

> 
> Can 6.4 build 6.8.1?  Or is a later version required?  If possible, I want
> to use the existing bootstrap compiler for OS X < 10.5, since building a
> new one is a lot of work, especially to root out unnecessary dependencies.
> And it would mean terminating support for Panther (10.3).  We only promise
> support for the most recent two OS version, so dropping Panther is not a
> big deal,
> but I try not to gratuitously drop support for older version if I can
> avoid it.
> 
> If a later version bootstrap compiler is needed, we should take the
> opportunity to update the documentation.

You might ask on the #haskell IRC channel...

Cheers,
  Chris