Version 7.4.2 (released 10 June 2012)

Stop!

For most users, we recommend installing the Haskell Platform instead of GHC. The current Haskell Platform release includes a recent GHC release as well as some other tools (such as cabal), and a larger set of libraries that are known to work together.

Bundled packages and cabal-install

GHC 7.4.2 only works with Cabal-install version 0.8 or later. Please upgrade if you have an older version of cabal-install.

Contents

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.

Supported platforms:

Supported platforms

Linux (x86)

NOTE: If you have too old a version of libc, then you will get an error like "floating point exception" from the binaries in these bindists. You will need to either upgrade your libc (we're not sure what the minimum version required is), or use a binary package built for your distribution instead.

Linux (x86_64)

NOTE: If you have too old a version of libc, then you will get an error like "floating point exception" from the binaries in these bindists. You will need to either upgrade your libc (we're not sure what the minimum version required is), or use a binary package built for your distribution instead.

Windows (x86) (standalone)

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

This installer will not overwrite previous installed versions of GHC.

MacOS X (x86)

This is an installer for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). The package requires Xcode 4.1 (in particular, the "Unix Development Support") to be already installed. You can find Xcode at http://developer.apple.com/ (or you may have a new enough version on your OS X installation DVD).

This is the same build as the OS X installer, but in bindist form.

MacOS X (x86_64)

This is an installer for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). The package requires Xcode 4.1 (in particular, the "Unix Development Support") to be already installed. You can find Xcode at http://developer.apple.com/ (or you may have a new enough version on your OS X installation DVD).

This is the same build as the OS X installer, but in bindist form.

FreeBSD (x86)

Gabor PALI has provided binary distribution tarballs for FreeBSD. These are complete builds, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.

Note: These are not the same as the lang/ghc port. The packages require ports math/gmp, converters/libiconv, devel/gmake, lang/perl5.10, devel/autoconf262 to be already installed. For installation, set your prefix by ./configure --prefix=${PREFIX} and install the binaries by "gmake install". For running the testsuite you will need the lang/python26 port as well.

If you have a 4.x version of GMP (installed from math/libgmp), then you will get an error like "libgmp.so.10 not found" from the binaries in these bindists. Upgrading your GMP port to 5.x by using the math/gmp port will solve this problem.

FreeBSD (x86_64)

Gabor PALI has provided binary distribution tarballs for FreeBSD. These are complete builds, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.

Note: These are not the same as the lang/ghc port. The packages require ports math/gmp, converters/libiconv, devel/gmake, lang/perl5.10, devel/autoconf262 to be already installed. For installation, set your prefix by ./configure --prefix=${PREFIX} and install the binaries by "gmake install". For running the testsuite you will need the lang/python26 port as well.

If you have a 4.x version of GMP (installed from math/libgmp), then you will get an error like "libgmp.so.10 not found" from the binaries in these bindists. Upgrading your GMP port to 5.x by using the math/gmp port will solve this problem.

Source Distribution

The source distribution needs an installed GHC (version 6.12 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.