Version 6.4.2 (released 19 April 2006)

Online Docs

Source Distribution

The source distribution needs an installed GHC (version 5.04 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.

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)

  • Fedora. RPMs are available from Fedora Extras.
  • RedHat Linux/x86 9.0 RPMs. These may work on any system with glibc 2.3, SuSE 9.1 and SuSE 9.2 have been tested.

  • Debian. see below.
  • Gentoo. GHC is available as an ebuild. However, the ebuild for 6.4.2 may be masked, depending on your setup.
  • 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 the Generic Linux distributions above. 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)

  • Fedora. RPMs are available from Fedora Extras.
  • Gentoo. GHC is available as an ebuild. However, the ebuild for 6.4.2 may be masked, depending on your setup.
  • 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.

Windows (x86) (standalone)

This is a Windows Installer for Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP, prepared by Sigbjorn Finne. It's a complete build, as above.

This installer relies on the Windows Installer runtime to operate. If, after having downloaded the above file, double-clicking on the MSI file doesn't start up the installer, the likely cause is that you don't have the Windows Installer runtime installed on your machine. You can download it from Microsoft:

Install the appropriate version, then double-click again on the MSI file.

If just want the files, a .zip bundle is also provided: ghc-6-4-2.zip

Windows (x86) (Visual Studio version)

Visual Haskell is a Visual Studio extension for Haskell, which comes with a complete GHC installation. Currently the GHC version packaged with Visual Haskell is a pre-release 6.5, not 6.4.2.

Debian: x86, alpha, hppa, m68k, powerpc, s390, sparc

All these platforms have ghc packages in unstable in the main Debian archive (and should move into testing shortly). Only x86 and sparc are registerised. "apt-get update; apt-get install ghc6 ghc6-prof ghc6-doc" as normal, with ghc6-hopengl, ghc6-libsrc providing some extra bits for those who want them.

For x86 I've also compiled for stable and uploaded to Isaac's "Haskell Experimental" repository. To use it add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list: deb http://www.syntaxpolice.org/haskell-experimental/stable/ and install as above.

The Debian packages are maintained by Ian Lynagh.

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.

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".

AIX 4.3 (PowerPC)

This is an unregisterised build, with no GHCi support or profiled libraries. Thanks to Audrey Tang for the build.