Building GHC 6.12.1 with Cabal 1.9.0 installed

[simonmar]

Reported by Nicolas Martyanoff <khaelin@gmail.com> on glasgow-haskell-users. I expect the build system is picking up Cabal 1.9.0 in preference to the version in the source tree.

---

I thought it might be good to build GHC 6.12.1 with itself just to be sure it's working fine before make a dist, but I now get the following error:

"/usr/local/bin/ghc"   -H32m -O  -package-conf libraries/bootstrapping.conf  -package-name ghc-6.12.1 -hide-all-packages -i -icompiler/nativeGen -icompiler/basicTypes -icompiler/cmm -icompiler/codeGen -icompiler/coreSyn -icompiler/cprAnalysis -icompiler/deSugar -icompiler/ghci -icompiler/hsSyn -icompiler/iface -icompiler/main -icompiler/parser -icompiler/prelude -icompiler/profiling -icompiler/rename -icompiler/simplCore -icompiler/simplStg -icompiler/specialise -icompiler/stgSyn -icompiler/stranal -icompiler/typecheck -icompiler/types -icompiler/utils -icompiler/vectorise -icompiler/stage1/build -icompiler/stage1/build/autogen -Icompiler/stage1/build -Icompiler/stage1/build/autogen -Icompiler/stage1 -Icompiler/../libraries/base/cbits -Icompiler/../libraries/base/include -Icompiler/. -Icompiler/parser -Icompiler/utils    -optP-include -optPcompiler/stage1/build/autogen/cabal_macros.h -package Cabal-1.9.0 -package array-0.3.0.0 -package base-4.2.0.0 -package bin-package-db-0.0.0.0 -package bytestring-0.9.1.5 -package containers-0.3.0.0 -package directory-1.0.1.0 -package filepath-1.1.0.3 -package hpc-0.5.0.4 -package old-time-1.0.0.3 -package process-1.0.1.2 -package unix-2.4.0.0  -DSTAGE=1 -Wall -fno-warn-name-shadowing -fno-warn-orphans -XCPP -XMagicHash -XUnboxedTuples -XPatternGuards -XForeignFunctionInterface -XEmptyDataDecls -XTypeSynonymInstances -XMultiParamTypeClasses -XFlexibleInstances -XRank2Types -XScopedTypeVariables -XDeriveDataTypeable -XRelaxedPolyRec     -odir compiler/stage1/build -hidir compiler/stage1/build -stubdir compiler/stage1/build -hisuf hi -osuf  o -hcsuf hc -c compiler/main/Packages.lhs -o compiler/stage1/build/Packages.o

compiler/main/Packages.lhs:233:63:
    Couldn't match expected type `InstalledPackageInfo_ String'
           against inferred type `Cabal-1.8.0.2:Distribution.InstalledPackageInfo.InstalledPackageInfo_
                                    m'
      Expected type: [InstalledPackageInfo_ String]
      Inferred type: [Cabal-1.8.0.2:Distribution.InstalledPackageInfo.InstalledPackageInfo_
                        m]
    In the second argument of `map', namely `conf'
    In the first argument of `return', namely
        `(map installedPackageInfoToPackageConfig conf)'
gmake[1]: *** [compiler/stage1/build/Packages.o] Error 1
gmake: *** [all] Error 2

I tried to "ghc-pkg mask" Cabal-1.8.0.2, then Cabal-1.9.0, didn't change anything.

Does someone know what's going on here, and what can be done to fix it ?

[galdor]

I just got the exact same result on a Linux x86_64 platform, so it's really platform/os independant.

[igloo]

I'm having problems installing Cabal HEAD as a user with 6.8.2:

$ ghc --make Setup
[...]
$ ./Setup configure --user --prefix=`pwd`/inst
[...]
$ ./Setup build -v
[...]
Registering Cabal-1.9.0...
/usr/bin/ghc-pkg update - --global --user --package-conf=dist/package.conf.inplace
Setup: Unable to rename "/usr/lib/ghc-6.8.2/package.conf" to
"/usr/lib/ghc-6.8.2/package.conf.old"
ghc-pkg.bin: /usr/lib/ghc-6.8.2/package.conf: renameFile: permission denied
(Permission denied)

Duncan, any idea what's going on?

[simonmar]

Presumably the problem here is that the build system is picking up the more recent version of Cabal and using it instead of the bundled version? Ian - why does this hanve anything to do with GHC 6.8.2, isn't that a separate problem?

[igloo]

Yes, the build problem is a separate issue, but I needed to build it in order to reproduce the problem :-)

Anyway, I've worked around it by using 6.10.4 instead.

It looks like what's happening is that bin-package-db.cabal says

build-depends: Cabal == 1.8.*

but compiler/ghc.cabal just says

build-depends: Cabal

I'm not entirely sure why Cabal doesn't decide to use 1.8.0.3 for ghc, but it doesn't:

"/home/ian/bindists/6.10.4/inst/bin/ghc" --with-ghc-pkg="/home/ian/bindists/6.10.4/inst/bin/ghc-pkg" --with-gcc="/usr/bin/gcc" --configure-option=--with-cc="/usr/bin/gcc"  --flags=stage1 --flags=ncg --ghc-options='-#include "cutils.h"' --ghc-option=-DSTAGE=1 --ghc-options=' -O' --package-db=/home/ian/ghc/6.12-branch/ghc/libraries/bootstrapping.conf --enable-shared --with-hscolour="/usr/bin/HsColour" --configure-option=CFLAGS="-Wall   " --configure-option=LDFLAGS="  " -- stage1 compiler
Configuring ghc-6.12.1.20100327...
Warning: 'include-dirs: ../libraries/base/cbits' is a relative path outside of
the source tree. This will not work when generating a tarball with 'sdist'.
Warning: 'include-dirs: ../libraries/base/include' is a relative path outside
of the source tree. This will not work when generating a tarball with 'sdist'.
Warning: This package indirectly depends on multiple versions of the same
package. This is highly likely to cause a compile failure.
package bin-package-db-0.0.0.0 requires Cabal-1.8.0.3
package ghc-6.12.1.20100327 requires Cabal-1.9.0

We could fix this by passing --constraint "Cabal == 1.8.0.3" (or whatever the right syntax is) whenever we configure a Cabal package (I assume that that is a no-op if the package doesn't depend on Cabal?) but the same thing could happen with any package we use from the bootstrapping compiler.

I think we should punt on this for now, as building with Cabal HEAD isn't something we support anyway.

[simonmar]

I suspect that we should be using --constraint for all of our bootstrap packages, to avoid problems when the user has installed later versions.

Do we really not support building with Cabal HEAD? I thought the GHC build was supposed to be independent of what packages the user has installed, at least for the bootstrap packages.

[igloo]

Fixed in 6.12 branch and HEAD.

Sun May  9 18:47:24 BST 2010  Ian Lynagh <igloo@earth.li>
  * Add version constraints for the boot packages; fixes trac #3852
  When using the bootstrapping compiler, we now explicitly constrain
  the version of boot packages (Cabal, extensible-exceptions, etc) to the
  in-tree version, so that the build system is less fragile should the
  user have a newer version installed for the bootstrapping compiler.