GHC team update 46

blog/2025-05-15-ghc-update-46.md

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+---
+slug: 2025-05-15-ghc-update
+title: "IOG GHC Update #46"
+authors: [sylvain,luite]
+tags: [ghc,ghc-update]
+---
+
+Triweekly update from the GHC DevX team at IOG.
+
+<!-- truncate -->
+
+Previous updates can be found [here](https://engineering.iog.io/tags/ghc-update).
+
+Sylvain: continued the experimentation with using `zig cc/c++` as a C/C++
+cross-compiler with GHC to build boot libraries. I manage to cross-build libffi (a
+dependency of the RTS) with a [libffi fork](https://github.com/vezel-dev/libffi)
+that supports Zig's build system.
+
+Sylvain: experimented with the addition of a `--target` flag to GHC to select a
+target. Also added `--list-targets` to list the available targets. This is not
+ready to be upstreamed yet.
+[stable-GHC#30](https://github.com/stable-haskell/ghc/issues/30#issuecomment-2851324370)
+
+Luite: Working on more efficient packing of heap objects by reordering
+smaller-than-word fields and reducing the size of tag fields of unboxed sums and
+unpacked constructors.
+
+Sylvain: worked on a fix for the compilation of C files with GHC when no RTS unit is present. [GHC#26018](https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/26018), [GHC!14300](https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/merge_requests/14300)
+
+Sylvain: deprecated an internal module exposed from `base`.
+[GHC#23432](https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/23432)
+[CLC!329](https://github.com/haskell/core-libraries-committee/issues/329)
+[GHC!14296](https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/merge_requests/14296).