Hi all,
today, I tried to build the ghc-ndp branch from a fresh tree after two
weeks off. Ultimately, it sort of worked, but not without some pain.
I'll describe what I did and the problems I've encountered in the hope
that it will be helpful.
darcs get http://darcs.haskell.org/ghc-ndp --partial
cd ghc-ndp
chmod u+x darcs-all
./darcs-all get
Fails with
== running darcs get --partial
http://darcs.haskell.org/ghc-ndp/packages/base
Invalid repository: http://darcs.haskell.org/ghc-ndp/packages/base
This is because darcs-all determines the base url of the repository by
removing a trailing "ghc". However, our url ends with "ghc-ndp" so this
doesn't work. The workaround is to change _darcs/prefs/defaultrepo to
http://darcs.haskell.org/ghc. I assume this is going to be problematic
for all branches.
cd libraries
darcs get http://darcs.haskell.org/packages/ndp
cd ..
<set up mk/build.mk>
autoreconf
sh boot
This step is new and, of course, I skipped it on first try. The README
mentions it but why is it necessary at all? Couldn't this be done as
part of configure?
configure
Works, but the first line of output is strange:
checking for GHC version date... darcs: getFdStatus: invalid argument
(Bad file descriptor)
make
Fails with
Running Haddock for ndp-0.1...
dist/build/tmp/./Data/Array/Parallel/Unlifted.hs:"dist/build/tmp/./Data/Array/Parallel/Unlifted.hs":
28:4: Parse error
make[1]: *** [doc.library.ndp] Error 1
make: *** [stage1] Error 2
The parse error is because ndp uses some ghc extensions which Haddock
doesn't understand. But why is Haddock run at all here? IMO, a separate
make doc step is preferable to running it automatically. In any case, I
assume it can be turned off but the build documentation doesn't seem to
say how. Also, IMO Haddock errors should never be treated as fatal by
the build system.
A related question: is there a way for a package to say that it doesn't
want to be processed with Haddock? From the Cabal documentation, I'd
guess the answer is no.
In any case,
cd compiler
make stage=2 boot
make stage=2
seems to give me a working compiler (thanks to Manuel for suggesting this).
In addition to the above, I've noticed the following problems.
1. Is there a way to get a clean tree? Both make clean and make
distclean fail to clean any subdirectories (compiler, rts) and
libraries. This is not really what I expect (and not what they used to
do, IIRC).
Also, my attempt to make distclean a second time failed with
mk/boilerplate.mk:53: mk/config.mk: No such file or directory
make: *** No rule to make target `mk/config.mk'. Stop.
IMO, cleaning should not require me to rerun configure.
2. Parallel make (i.e., make -j) doesn't work at all for me. It seems to
try to build all (or at least some) packages simultaneously which causes
Cabal to be built several times and ultimately falls over completely.
IIUC, this is because libraries/Makefile does not define dependencies
between packages (which is understandable) and does not force them to be
built in the right order (which it used to do, IIRC). This is quite
unfortunate, as make -j used to be quite a bit faster than plain make on
my dual-core Mac. It would be less of a win now that the libraries use
ghc --make, I guess, but would still speed up the compilation of the
compiler itself.
Finally, I'd like to point out that the recent changes to the build
system have caused and continue to cause a lot of problems for us. I
understand that refactoring the build system is a worthwhile task
but it would be really great if it was less disruptive. Perhaps
significant changes (like running Haddock by default) could be discussed
or at least publicised. Also, the lack of support for parallel make is
really unfortunate as it significantly increases turn-around times in
some cases (and is confusing to novice users, I guess).
Roman
_______________________________________________
Cvs-ghc mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cvs-ghc
