Debian stable not supported?

The Debian ghc6 package for the stable distribution is currently back at GHC 6.6 - not surprising given the way stable works at Debian. There is currently no backport of a more recent GHC to Debian stable. I need GHC 6.8 for a project to run on a production server. That means it will be running Debian stable. Unfortunately, the so-called "generic" Linux binary distribution package for GHC 6.8.3 does not work on the current, up-to-date Debian stable distribution because it is "too old". In my case, and I suspect for many people, the production server running stable is on a low-cost hosted VPS. That kind of platform doesn't have nearly enough memory and disk space to compile GHC. So even that is not an option. I know that in the past Haskell was used exclusively for research, but nowadays shouldn't it be possible to use Haskell also for production-quality projects? With help from Igloo and thetallguy on #ghc, for which I am grateful, I was finally able to get a working GHC 6.8.3 on my production server, but only after jumping through a lot of hoops. It involved setting up a Debian-stable-like environment in a chroot on another computer, building GHC there from source, and manually moving all of the appropriate files up to the server. Before I delete that chroot build environment - could it be useful for making GHC 6.8.3 available to others? If someone points me in the right direction, perhaps I could create a binary tarball and/or backport deb. Or at least record somewhere the basic steps of how to get a recent GHC in this situation. Thanks Yitz

* Yitzchak Gale
Before I delete that chroot build environment - could it be useful for making GHC 6.8.3 available to others? If someone points me in the right direction, perhaps I could create a binary tarball and/or backport deb. Or at least record somewhere the basic steps of how to get a recent GHC in this situation.
I think I'll face with the similar problem in the nearest future, except I have far more old system. So I'll be very greatful if you provide the instructions and record your experience. -- Roman I. Cheplyaka :: http://ro-che.info/ kzm: My program contains a bug. How ungrateful, after all I've done for it.

Hi Roman, Roman Cheplyaka wrote:
I think I'll face with the similar problem in the nearest future, except I have far more old system. So I'll be very greatful if you provide the instructions and record your experience.
OK, here's a brief summary of what I did. I hope I'm not forgetting anything. (Looks like I may need to do this again soon for 6.10, unless they support Debian stable this time.) On a Debian testing system with some disk space: 1. Install the cdebootstrap package. 2. cdebootstrap --flavour=build etch JAIL http:://your.debian.mirror where JAIL is the path to a new directory that will now be created, and http://your.domain.mirror is the URL to your favorite Debian mirror. 3. Download the GHC 6.8.3 source tarball (ghc-6.8.3-src.tar.bz2) and put it in JAIL/root/. 4. Become root. 5. cd JAIL/root 6. chroot .. You are now root in a simulated copy of the etch distribution. 7. apt-get update 8. apt-get install ghc6 9. tar xjvf ghc-6.8.3-src.tar.bz2 10. cd ghc-6.8.3 11. ./configure 12. make 13. Go to sleep. Wake up the next morning - it's done. 14. make install 15. ^D to exit the chroot jail. ^D again to exit the root shell. You are now yourself again. 16. cd JAIL 17. tar cjvf ghc-6.8.3-etch.tar.bz2 usr/local/bin usr/local/lib/ghc-6.8.3 usr/local/share/doc/ghc 18. Upload ghc-6.8.3-etch.tar.bz2 to your target etch machine. Now, on the target etch machine: 19. cd / 20. sudo tar xjvf /path/to/ghc-6.8.3-etch.tar.bz2 21. Make sure that /usr/local/bin is in your PATH by default. Regards, Yitz

"Yitzchak Gale"
Roman Cheplyaka wrote:
I think I'll face with the similar problem in the nearest future, except I have far more old system. So I'll be very greatful if you provide the instructions and record your experience.
(Looks like I may need to do this again soon for 6.10, unless they support Debian stable this time.)
Hi, Looks like it would be best to coordinate with debian-haskell: http://urchin.earth.li/pipermail/debian-haskell/2008-September/000492.html -- Cheers, Feri.

Am Montag, 22. September 2008 08:52 schrieb Yitzchak Gale:
[…]
Unfortunately, the so-called "generic" Linux binary distribution package for GHC 6.8.3 does not work on the current, up-to-date Debian stable distribution because it is "too old".
GHC 6.8.2 worked for me (on i386).
[…]
Best wishes, Wolfgang

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 09:52:57AM +0300, Yitzchak Gale wrote:
Before I delete that chroot build environment - could it be useful for making GHC 6.8.3 available to others? If someone points me in the right direction, perhaps I could create a binary tarball and/or backport deb.
You can make a binary distribution by running "make binary-dist" in the built tree. To make a backport deb you'd need to start with the Debian source package, not just the GHC tarball. Thanks Ian
participants (5)
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Ferenc Wagner
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Ian Lynagh
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Roman Cheplyaka
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Wolfgang Jeltsch
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Yitzchak Gale