Version 6.8.1 (released 3 November 2007)

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Source Distribution

The source distribution needs an installed GHC (version 6.0 at least). If your platform isn't currently supported with a binary distribution, then you'll need to consult the section on Porting GHC in the Building Guide.

Distribution packages

GHC is packaged for a number of operating systems and distributions. While they may lag behind the latest GHC release, advantages such as dependency checking and ease of uninstallation mean we recommend using them anyway, unless you have a particular need for new features or bug fixes.

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 (/usr or /usr/local on a Unix system), then you'll need to use a .tar.bz2 binary bundle.

Available binary distributions:

Linux (x86)

  • 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 this. 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)

  • Generic .tar.bz2 binary bundle. This was built on Fedora FC5, your mileage may vary. It is a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.

Sparc/Solaris

This is a binary distribution for Solaris 10, prepared by Christian Maeder. You will also need (amongst others) libreadline.so.5, libncurses.so.5, libm.so.2 and libgmp.so.3, which may mean setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If configure only finds ./install-sh, you need to run "./configure INSTALL=`pwd`/install-sh --prefix=...".

There may be problems with gcc-3.4.x; see #951 for details.

x86/Solaris

This is a binary distribution for Solaris 10, prepared by Christian Maeder. You will also need (amongst others) libreadline.so.5, libncurses.so.5, libm.so.2 and libgmp.so.3, which may mean setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If configure only finds ./install-sh, you need to run "./configure INSTALL=`pwd`/install-sh --prefix=...".

Windows (x86) (standalone)

This is a complete build, and should work for Microsoft Windows 2000, XP and Vista. It also includes support for compiling C++ files.

If just want the files, you have the choice of:

FreeBSD (x86_64)

Wilhelm B. Kloke has provided a binary distribution tarball for FreeBSD x86_64.

MacOS X (PowerPC)

This is a binary distribution for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), prepared by Christian Maeder. You will also need a GMP framework and a readline framework. For instructions see here.

When compiling programs that use the readline package you will need to pass -framework GNUreadline through to the linker, and may also need to tell it where your frameworks are installed, e.g. -optl-F$(HOME)/Library/Frameworks -optl-framework -optlGNUreadline.

This is a binary distribution prepared by Greg Heartsfield. It requires readline and GMP libraries to be installed.

MacOS X (Intel)

This is a binary distribution for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), prepared by Manuel Chakravarty. You will also need Xcode 3.0 (as available from the Leopard upgrade/install DVD or developer.apple.com) and readline 5.2 (preferably installed via macports in /opt/local). If you have GMP.framework installed (a leftover from 10.4), remove it first.

This is a binary distribution or Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), prepared by Greg Heartsfield. It requires the readline library and GMP framework to be installed.

This is a binary distribution for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), prepared by Christian Maeder. You will also need a GMP framework and a readline framework. For instructions see here.

When compiling programs that use the readline package you will need to pass -framework GNUreadline through to the linker, and may also need to tell it where your frameworks are installed, e.g. -optl-F$(HOME)/Library/Frameworks -optl-framework -optlGNUreadline.

This is a binary distribution for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), prepared by Christian Maeder. You will also need gmp3 and readline5 installed under /opt/local/. You can set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH if you have them installed elsewhere.

AIX 5.1L (PowerPC)

This is an unregisterised build, with no GHCi support. Note that it is for a snapshot of the 6.8 branch, due to some problems with the 6.8.1 release.

The bindist was provided by Audrey Tang.