I have dropped a current *not-overly-tested* snapshot of our current
Glasgow Haskell sources on ftp.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk, in
pub/haskell/glasgow/working/ghc-0.17-src-boot.tar.gz.{aa-af} [split
for FTPing robustness; 5+MB in total; untars to 30MB or so].

Joe F Programmer would be well advised to stick with 0.16 (our last
public release).  The ONLY PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE INTERESTED in 0.17
are:

    * Those who've had troubles with registers getting clobbered
      during "ccalls";

    * Those concerned with porting the compiler.

Porting situation: I've used these files to do an "initial boot" (==>
big, slow compiler) on a DECstation and an HP-PA box.  The chance of
that much success on a 32-bit Unix box is quite high.  Doing the
"registerising" process (to go fast) is still a black art.  If you are
an active porter, please keep us posted on your progress.

Important note: 0.17 unpacks into your *current working directory*,
not into a directory named "ghc-0.17".  So you very well may want
to...

    % mkdir ghc-0.17
    % cd ghc-0.17
    % cat .../ghc-0.17*.a? | gunzip -c | tar xfv -

The reason this non-distribution is so big is that it includes enough
intermediate C (.hc) files to be able to boot without already having a
Haskell compiler.  If you don't need those files, just do:

    % cd ghc/compiler
    % rm */*.hc
    % cd ../lib
    % rm */*.hc

As usual, comments to glasgow-haskell-{bugs,request}@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk.

Will Partain

Reply via email to