
On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:43:46PM +0800, Shu Wu wrote:
Hi buddies. I've been looking for methods to bootstrap GHC 6.10 but with no luck. It seems GHC 5.0 is the last version that provides HC source for bootstrapping. I think, however, bootstrapping GHC above 6.x is still necessary. First, it will be easier to build GHC on a new platform, eg, OpenSolaris.
We have a procedure for porting to a new platform: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Porting It's not perfectly smooth, and it's a bit of hassle, but you only need to do it once for each platform.
Second, compiling GHC from strap is the only way to go into OpenSolaris' official package repository, since all packages for OpenSolaris are built by Source Juicer (http://jucr.opensolaris.org/home/) from pure source code, and there can't be any pre-installed GHC on Source Juicer Build Grid.
We recommend that distributions bootstrap GHC from a binary, in the same way that they bootstrap gcc. Thanks Ian