Version 6.10.4 (released 16 July 2009)

Online Docs

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:

Community supported platforms:

Supported platforms

Linux (x86)

  • Generic i386 Linux. This is a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.

  • Generic i386 Linux. You need to have a file /lib/libtinfo.so.5 to use this bindist. This is a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.

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, but 2.7 is known to work), 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, but 2.7 is known to work), 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, XP and Vista. It also includes support for compiling C++ files.

This installer will not overwrite previous installed versions of GHC, with the exception that the default handler for .lhs and .hs files will point to the most recently installed version.

MacOS X (Intel)

This is an installer for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). The package requires Xcode 3.0 (in particular, the "Unix Development Support") to be already installed. You can find Xcode 3.0 on your Leopard installation DVD (or at http://developer.apple.com/.

This is a binary distribution for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), prepared by Christian Maeder. It needs libiconv.2.dylib and libncurses.5.4.dylib under /usr/lib/.

Community supported platforms

These platforms are supported by community members.

Sparc/Solaris

This is a full binary distribution for Solaris, prepared by Christian Maeder. It should work on Solaris 10 and (Open) Solaris 11.

Please use gtar rather than tar to unpack the tarball, as tar may have problems with filenames longer than 100 characters.

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

There may be problems with gcc >= 4.3.x; see this page for details.

The binary-dist was compiled using gcc-4.2.2.

The binary depends on (at least): 

libiconv.so.2 =>   /usr/local/lib/libiconv.so.2
libncurses.so.5 => /usr/local/lib/libncurses.so.5
libm.so.2 =>       /usr/local/lib/libm.so.2
libgmp.so.3 =>     /usr/local/lib/libgmp.so.3

x86/Solaris

This is a binary distribution for Solaris, prepared by Christian Maeder. You will also need (amongst others) libcurses.so.1, which may mean setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Please use gtar rather than tar to unpack the tarball, as tar may have problems with filenames longer than 100 characters.

FreeBSD (x86)

Jacula Modyun has provided binary distribution tarballs for three versions of FreeBSD x86.

FreeBSD (x86_64)

Ashish SHUKLA has provided binary distribution tarballs for two versions of FreeBSD x86_64.

MacOS X (PowerPC)

NOTE: In order to use GHC on MacOS X PowerPC, you must have Xcode 3.1 installed.

This is a binary distribution for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) on PowerPC G5 machines, prepared by Christian Maeder. It needs libiconv.2.dylib and libncurses.5.4.dylib under /usr/lib/.

Source Distribution

  • ghc-6.10.4-src.tar.bz2 (7.7 MB). This provides the compiler and a minimal set of libraries. For more information on building, see the building guide.
  • ghc-6.10.4-src-extralibs.tar.bz2 (0.5 MB). If you unpack this tarball on top of the above then you will get a number of extra libraries. However, the build will take significantly longer. Alternatively these, and many others, can be downloaded and compiled from Hackage once GHC is built.
  • testsuite-6.10.4.tar.bz2 (2.8MB). If you unpack this tarball on top of the above then you will be able to run the testsuite.

The source distribution needs an installed GHC (version 6.6 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.

If you have libraries installed somewhere non-standard then you will need to put something like this in mk/build.mk before building:

EXTRA_CABAL_CONFIGURE_FLAGS = --extra-include-dirs=/usr/local/include \
                              --extra-lib-dirs=/usr/local/lib