Re: GHC updating

[matthew sporleder <msporleder%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:01 PM, David Holland
<dholland-pkgusers%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
> On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:45:16PM -0400, matthew sporleder wrote:
>  > I think the last efforts for getting GHC updated died around late
>  > 2013/early 2014.
>  >
>  > lang/ghc7 lines up as being the version released in April, 2013.
>  >
>  > So here we are two years later needing to get to 7.10.
>  >
>  > --
>  >
>  > Is the bootstrap politics issue resolved?
>  >
>  > Do we need to go ahead and get a TNF machine in order to build some
>  > new boostraps?
>
> The problem is not machines, the problem is that replacing the
> bootstrap requires hand-building multiple ghc versions, not all of
> which will work on netbsd without debugging.
>
> If you actually want to use ghc and want to help, I would suggest
> beginning work on a ghc 6.12 package; use a binary 6.8 package from
> the existing lang/ghc as the bootstrap kit. There are TNF-built
> packages of that in the package repos.
>
> Eventually we want the 6.12 package to be able to build from a 6.8
> binary package, from an already installed 6.8, or from an already
> installed 6.12; but that's a fairly straightforward change given the
> baseline package.
>
> Once we have a working 6.12 package, then the next step is (I think)
> 7.4, or maybe 7.2, depending on which is the newest version that still
> supports building with 6.12. And so on.
>
> And yes, the only halfway sane way forward is to maintain packages for
> all of these.
>
> Then the next step is to set up so that one step builds a
> cross-compiler to amd64 so we can have a 64-bit ghc too.
>


I'd love to start giving it a shot.

What counts as a secure-enough system for binary bootstraps?