Version 6.4 (released 11 March 2005)

Online Docs

Source Distribution

The source distribution needs an installed GHC 5.X or 6.X to build. If there isn't a binary distribution for your platform (any version), then you'll need to consult the section on Porting GHC in the Building Guide.

Binary Packages

The OS-specific packages (eg. RPMs on Linux) are generally a better bet than the vanilla .tar.bz2 binary bundles, because they will check for dependencies and allow the package to be uninstalled at a later date.

However, if you don't have permission to install binaries on your system, or you want to install somewhere other than the default place (usually /usr or /usr/local), then you'll need to use a .tar.bz2 binary bundle.

Available binary distributions (more will appear as they are built):

Linux (x86)

  • Fedora. RPMs available from the Fedora Haskell Project.

  • RedHat Linux/x86 9.0 RPMs. These may work on any system with glibc 2.3, SuSE 9.1 and SuSE 9.2 have been tested.

  • ArchLinux. There are distributions for ArchLinux here.

  • Generic Linux with glibc 2.3 (e.g. RedHat 9). This is a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.

NOTE: You need the libreadline.so.4 and libncurses.so.5 libraries to use the distributions above. Newer Linux distributions come with libreadline.so.5 only (e.g. SuSE 9.2), so we have provided a readline4 compatibility RPM for this case.

Linux (x86_64)

Linux (PowerPC)

A small patch is required to build GHC 6.4 on PowerPC/PowerPC64.

PowerPC/Linux support is by Ryan Lortie.

Linux (PowerPC 64)

This build is unregisterised, has no GHCi support, and no NCG.

A small patch is required to build GHC 6.4 on PowerPC/PowerPC64.

PowerPC/Linux support is by Ryan Lortie.

Windows (x86)

This is a Windows Installer for Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP, prepared by Sigbjorn Finne. It's a complete build, as above.

This installer relies on the Windows Installer runtime to operate. If, after having downloaded the above file, double-clicking on the MSI file doesn't start up the installer, the likely cause is that you don't have the Windows Installer runtime installed on your machine. You can download it from Microsoft:

Install the appropriate version, then double-click again on the MSI file.

FreeBSD (x86)

GHC is in the FreeBSD ports tree as lang/ghc.

To install a binary package, try pkg_add -r ghc provided the package exists on whatever mirror site your system is set up to use.

To install from source instead, make sure your copy of /usr/ports is up to date, and say cd /usr/ports/lang/ghc && make install.

OpenBSD x86

There is a binary distribution with profiling libs, no docs:

OpenBSD support is thanks to Don Stewart

.

MacOS X 10.3 (Panther)

This package includes GHCi, profiling, dynamic linking support (experimental), documentation, and double-clickable icons.

MacOS X packages were prepared by Wolfgang Thaller.

MacOS X 10.2 & 10.3 (using darwinports)

GHC can be installed on MacOS X using the darwinports system. See this message for details.

AIX 5.1L (PowerPC)

This is an unregisterised build, with no GHCi support.

PowerPC/AIX support is by John Goerzen and Autrijus Tang.