Can't build GHC from Git with MinGHC

[erikd]

It seems its not possible to build GHC from git with MinGHC.

I'm doing this under Wine on Linux. I do perl boot on Linux, then run the bash.exe shell (from win-bash, not MinGHC, see #39) under Wine and when I try to configure I get:

checking for gfind... no
checking for find... /usr/bin/find
checking for sort... /usr/bin/sort
checking for GHC version date... inferred 7.11.20150409
checking for GHC Git commit id... inferred fc14e124c555e00d73bba461df01a7d8cf9c050d
This configuration does not support the `--srcdir' option..

Is this a known issue? How easy is it to fix?

[ndmitchell]

The current goal is for MinGHC to build Cabal packages. Eventually, I think being able to build GHC itself would be great, but that's not the goal yet, so I would be surprised if it worked... Note that the best GHC build instructions recommend MSYS 2, and we are still on MSYS 1, but there are other things we don't ship that are required too.

My hope was to revisit this after Shake can build GHC, since then you have more flexibility for being robust to alternative configurations, and need less shell tools with less precise semantics.

[erikd]

@ndmitchell Any idea what it is about the MinGHC version of GHC that prevents it from compiling GHC from Git?

[ndmitchell]

Just a case of it not being something we've tried. It might turn out to be one or two binaries short, or you might need to start from scratch. Basing around MSYS2 is definitely the first step though, since that's what GHC HQ recommends.

[erikd]

Msys2 doesn't want to install at all under Wine.

[ndmitchell]

Erik, I think you're biting off a lot at once. Using Wine to test GHC patches on Windows isn't necessarily going to work anyway, or give you confidence they work on real Windows. Why not try a VM?

I think keeping this ticket is a good idea, as I would eventually like MinGHC to have a good story about compiling GHC. But it's not there yet, and trying to be first and using Wine is likely a difficult route to take...

[elieux]

Cygwin-on-Wine (and MSYS2-on-Wine) is largely unexplored territory. There's at least one guy testing these scenarios and making patches for Wine, but it's expected to take some time before it's stable enough for building GHC.

[ndmitchell]

We now advise people use Stack instead, MinGHC is no longer supported. I think stack path answers this question. commercialhaskell/stack#1051 is this ticket, but for Stack.