bootstrap from HC files

[simonmar]

There's some work to do on 6.8 to ensure that we can still bootstrap from HC files. This will be slightly harder due to the new Cabal-based build system for libraries, and the solution will probably involve 'setup makefile' somewhere. Also we'll need to update the building guide to include the new instructions, whatever they may be.

[kili]

I'd like to see this fixed for ghc-6.8.3, because for a proper OpenBSD port, bootstrapping from a precompiled binary is a no-go. I hope to get the time to review, cleanup and attach my current diffs until next week. Current state is that I'm able to create an unregisterised HC file bundle and bootstrap a working stage1 from this bundle (on i386), but the next step still doesn't work because some of the -inplace tools (ghc-pkg is one of them) aren't available yet.

Please note: if you don't consider this important enough for 6.8.3, I can as well keep the patches locally in the OpenBSD port and try to adopt them for 6.10.1 later.

[kili]

Work in Progres, QUICK HACK ALERT!

[kili]

The diff I uploaded contains some comments inline. It's for ghc-6.8.2 but also applies to the latest stable snapshot (ghc-6.8.2.20080401).

As written earlier, it's possible to create a HC file bundle (with some additional created files) and to build a stage1 compiler with this. I'm a little bit uncertain how to proceed -- either go ahead using libcompat (which is a little bit ugly), or try to rebuild all the libraries immediately with that stage1 compiler (but without using utils/ghc-pkg, since it's not yet buildable), then build the remaining tools.

[shepheb]

The ArmLinuxGhc project would love to have bootstrapping working for 6.10 (or in 6.9), since the move to libffi makes 6.10 much easier to port than 6.8.

[simonpj]

Let's postpone this past the 6.10 release, because the build system is in upheaval.

Simon & Simon

[bogner]

Replying to simonmar:

There's some work to do on 6.8 to ensure that we can still bootstrap from HC files. This will be slightly harder due to the new Cabal-based build system for libraries, and the solution will probably involve 'setup makefile' somewhere. Also we'll need to update the building guide to include the new instructions, whatever they may be.

[igloo]

Porting to a new platform is now working again:  http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Porting

Doing a non-bootstrapping build from HC files isn't something that we plan to support, especially given that the registerised via-C way will be disappearing.