Re: Unable to compile ghc-8.2.2 with ghc-8.4.3

Hi Ben, Updating the new build tool is e right thing to do, long term, but it unfortunate doesn't help with my objective of compiling old versions of ghc ... but there is a quick here that I could exploit. Since I'm building for the same platform, bug just using different versions of the operating system, I think I can create the C files in an old Debian inside docker and use them in the more modern host machine to build the old ghc. On Fri, 31 Aug 2018, 15:36 Ben Gamari, wrote:

Sam Halliday writes:

...

Hi Ben,

This would definitely help. I could use a docker image of a really old OS that has old ghc binaries available, to generate the .c for that old version of GHC (e.g. v 7.0 or something). Then I could use those files to bootstrap a ghc 7.0 on my machine, and from there every version of ghc since. It would make a lot of sense for the "unregistered" sources to be made available as an optional download alongside the source code, if haskell.org were open to that possibility.

This is a very interesting idea. The build system currently isn't really setup in a way to make this possible, but this could likely be changed in our new build system, Hadrian. Also, I suspect this would require some adjustments to the C code generator, which very likely has some platform dependence in its output.

Perhaps you'd like to try picking up this task?

Cheers,

- Ben