This utility is only intended for use in building cabal-install on a new platform. If you already have a functional cabal-install, however old, then please instead run cabal install cabal-install.

The typical use case is porting to a new Linux architecture. In that case, a linux-${GHCVER}.json file is available in the bootstrap/ folder:

On a Linux system you are bootstrapping, run

./bootstrap/bootstrap.py -d ./bootstrap/linux-${GHCVER}.json -w /path/to-ghc

from the top directory of the source checkout.

For offline builds, you can first run

./bootstrap/bootstrap.py -d ./bootstrap/linux-${GHCVER}.json -w /path/to-ghc fetch

to fetch tarballs for all the dependencies. These can then be used by a further bootstrap command by way of the --bootstrap-sources argument:

./bootstrap/bootstrap.py -w /path/to-ghc --bootstrap-sources bootstrap-sources.tar.gz

You will need to generate a ${PLATFORM}-${GHCVER}.json file for other platforms and then use it in the same way as it is shown for Linux above. On a system with functional cabal-install, do:

1. Install the same GHC version as you will use to bootstrap on the host system.

2. Build a dependency description file ($PLATFORM-$GHCVER.json, e.g. macosx-8.8.4.json) by running:

   cabal build --with-compiler=/path/to/ghc --dry-run cabal-install:exe:cabal
   cp dist-newstyle/cache/plan.json bootstrap/$PLATFORM-$GHCVER.plan.json
   cd bootstrap
   cabal run -v0 cabal-bootstrap-gen -- $PLATFORM-$GHCVER.plan.json | tee $PLATFORM-$GHCVER.json

3. You may need to tweak bootstrap/$PLATFORM-$GHCVER.json file manually, for example, to toggle flags.

There are rules in the top-level Makefile for generation of these files.

In order to update the bootstrap plans on linux there is the convenient ./generate_bootstrap_plans script. You can modify this script with the GHC versions you want to generate the plans for and then run it to generate the plans.

./generate_bootstrap_plans