GHC 6.4.2 won't build on Mac OS X
Problem I'm running Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.6) and trying to build GHC 6.4.2 (using GCC 4.0.1 and GHC 6.4.1) and I'm ran into a problem where certain constants (e.g., UNDO_DELETE, UNDO_INSERT, UNDO_BEGIN, UNDO_END) are not found, causing compilation to stop. The same issue occurred for at least one other user with GHC 6.5; unfortunately, I can't find the post again.
Solution? Tiger ships with a NetBSD partial version of the readline library in /usr. Unfortunately, this file lacks a lot of the functionality in the GNU readline and is not compatible enough.
To get around this: # Download and decompress the GNU readline library, v5.1 tarball (other version may work) # cd <readline source dir> # ./configure # make # sudo make install #Installs to /usr/lib/include and /usr/lib/bin # cd <GHC source dir> # export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib # tell linker to use GNU version of readline # export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include # tell compiler to use GNU version of readline # ./configure --disable-openal --disable-alut # Audio disabled because of unrealted bug # make # sudo make install
This should do it. Steps 7 and 8 could cause problems because the compile will look for ALL libraries in /usr/local before looking in /usr.
The compilation is successful and ghc and ghci run; however, Unfortunately, I won't be able to test the results for some time.
Follow-Up? It should be possible to detect the lack of readline through the configure process. The NetBSD bad readline.h file results in the following statements: <pre> checking for rl_erase_empty_line in -lreadline... no checking for rl_free_undo_list in -lreadline... no </pre>
The GNU readline 5.1 library results in the following statements: <pre> checking for rl_erase_empty_line in -lreadline... yes checking for rl_free_undo_list in -lreadline... yes </pre>
It may be possible to create a test in the configure file by looking at the platform and these two functions. Also, the platform-specific documentation could be updated.
Trac metadata
| Trac field | Value |
|---|---|
| Version | 6.4.2 |
| Type | Bug |
| TypeOfFailure | OtherFailure |
| Priority | normal |
| Resolution | Unresolved |
| Component | Compiler |
| Test case | |
| Differential revisions | |
| BlockedBy | |
| Related | |
| Blocking | |
| CC | |
| Operating system | |
| Architecture |