GHC: Distribution 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.

While they may lag behind the latest GHC release, we recommend using them anyway for the above reasons, unless you have a particular need for new features or bug fixes.

Available Packages

Packages are available for the following systems:

Arch Linux (i686, x86_64)
Debian (alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc)
Fedora (i386, ppc, x86_64)
FreeBSD (x86)
Gentoo (alpha, amd64, hppa, ia64, ppc, ppc64, sparc, x86, x86 fbsd)
MacOS X (Intel, PowerPC)
NetBSD (x86)
OpenBSD (x86)
openSUSE (i586, x86_64)
Ubuntu (amd64, i386, powerpc)

Arch Linux (i686, x86_64)

GHC packages are in the Arch Linux "extra" repository.

The packages are maintained by Simo Leone.

Debian (alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc)

All Debian platforms have ghc6 packages in the main Debian archive. Use apt-get update && apt-get install ghc6 ghc6-prof ghc6-doc to install them as normal; you can also get the library sources in the ghc6-libsrc package.

The extralibs, as well as various other libraries, are available as libghc6-library-dev. You may also want libghc6-library-prof and libghc6-library-doc for the profiling libraries and documentation respectively, but sometimes this will be included in the main package.

Newer packages may be available in Haskell Unsafe.

The packages are maintained by Ian Lynagh.

Fedora (i386, ppc, x86_64)

RPMs are available from Fedora Extras.

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.

The packages are maintained by haskell@FreeBSD.org.

Gentoo (alpha, amd64, hppa, ia64, ppc, ppc64, sparc, x86, x86 fbsd)

GHC is available as an ebuild. Run emerge dev-lang/ghc to get the latest version Gentoo considers stable; later versions may be available but masked.

The packages are maintained by the Gentoo Haskell team.

MacOS X (Intel, PowerPC)

Contrary to the recommendation at the top of this page, for Mac OS X we provide a native system installer, so you are probably better off downloading the installer for the latest release rather than using the alternatives below.

GHC is available via the MacPorts system. compiler is built from source, using a binary bootstrap compiler. Both 10.3 (Panther) and 10.4 (Tiger) are supported.

There is also a port ghc-devel of the darcs HEAD, which installs its binaries as bin_name-6.7.date, so it can be installed alongside the port of the released version.

The packages are maintained by Gregory Wright.

NetBSD (x86)

GHC is in the NetBSD package 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/pkgsrc is up to date, and say cd /usr/pkgsrc/lang/ghc && make install.

OpenBSD (x86)

GHC is now in the OpenBSD ports tree as lang/ghc. Make sure your ports tree is up to date, and say cd /usr/ports/lang/ghc && make install.

The packages are maintained by Don Stewart.

openSUSE (i586, x86_64)