On Jan 23, 2008 7:32 AM, Martin Guy <martinwguy@yahoo.it> wrote:

> 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.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