Building happy -- setup: internal error: evacuate: strange closure type 2122076

[datenwolf]

I'm running a Gentoo system and use the haskell overlay. The Gentoo-Haskell folks strongly advise using their provided packages instead of cabal-install.

When I try to emerge (=install) [dev-haskell/happy-1.18.10]( http://www.haskell.org/happy/) the build process aborts with the message

>>> Compiling source in /var/tmp/portage/dev-haskell/happy-1.18.10/work/happy-1.18.10 ...
./setup build
setup: internal error: evacuate: strange closure type 2122076
    (GHC version 7.6.1 for x86_64_unknown_linux)
    Please report this as a GHC bug:  http://www.haskell.org/ghc/reportabug
/var/tmp/portage/dev-haskell/happy-1.18.10/temp/environment: line 878: 23486 Aborted                 ./setup "$@"

[datenwolf]

emerge dev-haskell/happy build.log with error

[simonmar]

Could it be that the Setup.hs file from Happy is the first program that you have tried to build and run with your installed compiler, and in fact everything crashes? Could you try compiling and running Hello World?

[datenwolf]

No, happy is not the first package built with the new compiler. In fact the happy build was part of a haskell-updater --upgrade run, and several (about 50 or so) other packages built just fine.

What's even more interesting though (and why the Bug is probably better left with the gentoo-haskell folks) is, that if I use cabal-install to install happy into my user directory it builds just fine.

I also have found two other packages affected in the same way: texmath-0.6.1.2 and pandoc-1.9.4.5

In both cases ./setup bails out with a strange closure type evacuation. But at least texmath can be installed through cabal-install just fine. pandoc doesn't install because the system package manager installed packages (bytestring to be specific) is in conflict with dependencies.

[simonmar]

Most packages build without actually running any Haskell code, Happy is slightly unusual in that it has a Setup.hs file that is built and run during installation. pandoc and texmath have the same property (look for Build-type: Custom in their .cabal files).

Still, it is strange that you can use cabal-install to install Happy manually.

I suspect there are some inconsistent packages somewhere, and when you use cabal-install manually it is avoiding the problematic packages. What happens if you rename .ghc?

[igloo]

No response from submitter, so closing.