Building GHC head on Mavericks with Xcode 5

Updated on 4 Dec 2013.

I upgraded to Mavericks and Xcode 5. There is still "gcc" but it is in fact "clang":

% which gcc
/usr/bin/gcc
% gcc --version
Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 5.0 (clang-500.2.79) (based on LLVM 3.3svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin13.0.0
Thread model: posix

Which introduced this "gcc", Mavericks or Xcode 5? I don't know. This "gcc" does not accept some "gcc" options. So, GHC head cannot be built.

This article describes how to build GHC head on Mavericks with Xcode 5.

Installing Command Line Tools

The way to install Command Line Tools on Mavericks is different from that of Mountain Lion. I don't know this is required for GHC build but the following procedure does this:

% xcode-select --install

Sequence of GHC build

I have the following "build.mk":

% cat mk/build.mk
InstallExtraPackages = YES

The following is my sequence to build GHC:

% make maintainer-clean
% perl boot
% ./configure
% make -j 3

Pitfalls

The command name of "gcc" is hard-coded in some tools including "hsc2hs". So, the name of "gcc" is important. The following does NOT work:

% ./configure --with-gcc=

You need to make a symbolic link to your C compiler if its name is not "gcc".

If you installed 32bit GHC 7.6.3, you will get troubles. I recommend to install 64bit GHC 7.6.3 instead.

After installing proper "gcc" as described later, you need to modify the "C compiler command" entry of "/Library/Frameworks/GHC.framework/Versions/7.6.3-x86_64/usr/lib/ghc-7.6.3/settings".

Building GHC with clang

You need to install clang-xcode5-wrapper. Even if you don't modify "settings", the following works.

% ghc clang-xcode5-wrapper.hs
% sudo cp clang-xcode5-wrapper /usr/local/bin/gcc

And you need to install alex 3.1.3 and happy 1.19.2.

Then "settings" should have:

 ("C compiler command", "/usr/local/bin/gcc"),

So far, "integer-gmp" cannot be built. So, you should add the following to "mk/build.mk":

INTEGER_LIBRARY    = integer-simple

If you want to build GHC head with integer-gmp, apply this patch.

Building GHC with apple-gcc42

You can build GHC with "apple-gcc42" without any problems. I installed "apple-gcc42" by MacPorts:

% sudo port install apple-gcc42
% cd /opt/local/bin
% sudo ln -s gcc-apple-4.2 gcc

"settings" should have:

 ("C compiler command", "/opt/local/bin/gcc"),

Building GHC with gcc48

You can build GHC with "gcc48" without any problems. I installed "gcc48" by MacPorts:

% sudo port install gcc48
% cd /opt/local/bin
% sudo ln -s gcc-mp-4.8 gcc

"settings" should have:

 ("C compiler command", "/opt/local/bin/gcc"),