Working with GHC HEAD

[Antoine Latter]

Folks,

I was trying to see what GHC head was like, but I've run into a few
snags compiling packages.

My existing binary for cabal-install can install quite a few packages,
but then starts giving me strange errors eventually:

>>>
$ cabal --version
cabal-install version 0.6.2
using version 1.6.0.1 of the Cabal library

$ ghc --version
The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 6.11.20090724

$ cabal install zlib
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring zlib-0.5.2.0...
ghc-stage2: /home/alatter/.ghc/x86_64-linux-6.11.20090724/package.conf:6:163:
    parse error on input `Nothing'
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
zlib-0.5.2.0 failed during the configure step. The exception was:
exit: ExitFailure 1
<<<

If I then do:

>>>
$ mv /home/alatter/.ghc/x86_64-linux-6.11.20090724/package.conf
/home/alatter/.ghc/x86_64-linux-6.11.20090724/package.conf.back

$ cabal install zlib
<<<

Everything works great.

After looking at the package.conf being complained about, the last
line looks like so:

>>>
InstalledPackageInfo {package = PackageIdentifier {pkgName =
PackageName "cpphs", pkgVersion = Version {versionBranch = [1,7],
versionTags = []}}, license = LGPL Nothing, copyright = "2004-8,
Malcolm Wallace", maintainer = "Malcolm Wallace
<Malcolm.Wallace at cs.york.ac.uk>", author = ...
<<<

Not the license field of the package info - we have "license = LGPL
Nothing, copright ...".

I thought that maybe since GHC head ships with the new dev version of
Cabal, I need the dev version of cabal-install to properly install
packages. However cabal-install (and most of the things I want to test
out) require the 'network' package, which doesn't build against GHC
head (System.Posix.Internals doesn't exist, and the functionality that
'network' uses from there now lives in GHC.IO.* and is much changed).

So a few things:

- Should I expect the stable version of cabal-install built against
GHC 6.10 to work for head? Are the errors I'm getting expected?

- Does anyone have a version of 'network' which builds against GHC
head? I could bludgeon in the new GHC.IO.FD.FD type myself, but I'd
thought I'd ask around first.

Thanks,
Antoine