Martin,
I was able to make an unregisterised port of GHC 6.8.2 to the N810 by using
Scratchbox with the qemu-arm-eabi patch[1]. Have you started on a
registerised port? I have been reading the ARM Architecture Reference
Manual and other documents about the ARM ABI, and I am working on a
registerised port of GHC for the N810.
[1]
http://maemogeek.blogspot.com/2007/11/installing-qemu-arm-eabi-patch-into.ht...
On Jan 23, 2008 7:32 AM, Martin Guy
I've been working on porting GHC to armel for the Nokia N810. Unfortunately, I can't use the packages you made because the OS (maemo.org) is based on Debian Sarge and uses libc-2.5. I'm using scratchbox (scratchbox.org) and qemu and following the instructions at http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Porting , but have been unsuccessful. The stage1 compiler compiles fine, but then crashes when building the stage2 compiler on qemu. I've tried GHC 6.4.2, 6.6.1, and 6.8.2, but 6.6.1 is the version I get furthest with. Is there any tips you can give me? Do you still have the intermediate .hc files from your builds? (The .hc files built on a ARM might work better.) Did you have similar problems with qemu?
I used a fast x86 to make the .hc files, as documented in the URL you cite, then did the final build on a lot of real ARMs. The problem is it needs over 128MB RAM (yes, RAM) to compile some of the files - I did these few under QEMU. My personal notes are attached - these are not a product, they are my own personal notes, so please don't expect them to be a how-to. Porting GHC was difficult and not straightforward, dying at many stages for many different reasons.
The real answer is for Maemo to update its software to versions from this century. I did this in 2006 trying to bootstrap the Debian arm EABI port and my notes are at http://cluster.aleph1.co.uk/~martin/maemo-fixes.txthttp://cluster.aleph1.co.uk/%7Emartin/maemo-fixes.txt
For further help with this, I suggest we find a mailing list where others can give their expertise and experience, and where in future people will find the outcome of our discussion. How about http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users ?
Good luck!
M