12 KiB
User Guide
ghcup --help
is your friend.
Basic usage
For the simple interactive TUI (not available on windows), run:
ghcup tui
For the full functionality via cli:
# list available ghc/cabal versions
ghcup list
# install the recommended GHC version
ghcup install ghc
# install a specific GHC version
ghcup install ghc 8.2.2
# set the currently "active" GHC version
ghcup set ghc 8.4.4
# install cabal-install
ghcup install cabal
# update ghcup itself
ghcup upgrade
Configuration
A configuration file can be put in ~/.ghcup/config.yaml
. The default config file
explaining all possible configurations can be found in this repo: config.yaml.
Partial configuration is fine. Command line options always override the config file settings.
Manpages
For man pages to work you need man-db as your man
provider, then issue man ghc
. Manpages only work for the currently set ghc.
MANPATH
may be required to be unset.
Shell-completion
Shell completions are in scripts/shell-completions directory of this repository.
For bash: install shell-completions/bash
as e.g. /etc/bash_completion.d/ghcup
(depending on distro)
and make sure your bashrc sources the startup script
(/usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
on some distros).
Caching
GHCup has a few caching mechanisms to avoid redownloads. All cached files end up in ~/.ghcup/cache
by default.
Downloads cache
Downloaded tarballs (such as GHC, cabal, etc.) are not cached by default unless you pass ghcup --cache
or set caching
in your config via ghcup config set cache true
.
Metadata cache
The metadata files (also see github.com/haskell/ghcup-metadata)
have a 5 minutes cache per default depending on the last access time of the file. That means if you run
ghcup list
10 times in a row, only the first time will trigger a download attempt.
Clearing the cache
If you experience problems, consider clearing the cache via ghcup gc --cache
.
Compiling GHC from source
Compiling from source is supported for both source tarballs and arbitrary git refs. See ghcup compile ghc --help
for a list of all available options.
If you need to overwrite the existing build.mk
, check the default files
in data/build_mk, copy them somewhere, adjust them and
pass --config path/to/build.mk
to ghcup compile ghc
.
Common build.mk
options are explained here.
Make sure your system meets all the prerequisites.
Cross support
ghcup can compile and install a cross GHC for any target. However, this requires that the build host has a complete cross toolchain and various libraries installed for the target platform.
Consult the GHC documentation on the prerequisites.
For distributions with non-standard locations of cross toolchain and
libraries, this may need some tweaking of build.mk
or configure args.
See ghcup compile ghc --help
for further information.
XDG support
To enable XDG style directories, set the environment variable GHCUP_USE_XDG_DIRS
to anything.
Then you can control the locations via XDG environment variables as such:
XDG_DATA_HOME
: GHCs will be unpacked inghcup/ghc
subdir (default:~/.local/share
)XDG_CACHE_HOME
: logs and download files will be stored inghcup
subdir (default:~/.cache
)XDG_BIN_HOME
: binaries end up here (default:~/.local/bin
)XDG_CONFIG_HOME
: the config file is stored inghcup
subdir asconfig.yaml
(default:~/.config
)
Note that ghcup
makes some assumptions about structure of files in XDG_BIN_HOME
. So if you have other tools
installing e.g. stack/cabal/ghc into it, this will likely clash. In that case consider disabling XDG support.
Env variables
This is the complete list of env variables that change GHCup behavior:
GHCUP_USE_XDG_DIRS
: see XDG support aboveTMPDIR
: where ghcup does the work (unpacking, building, ...)GHCUP_INSTALL_BASE_PREFIX
: the base of ghcup (default:$HOME
)GHCUP_CURL_OPTS
: additional options that can be passed to curlGHCUP_WGET_OPTS
: additional options that can be passed to wgetGHCUP_GPG_OPTS
: additional options that can be passed to gpgGHCUP_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK
: Skip the (possibly annoying) update check when you run a commandCC
/LD
etc.: full environment is passed to the build system when compiling GHC via GHCup
Installing custom bindists
There are a couple of good use cases to install custom bindists:
- manually built bindists (e.g. with patches)
- example:
ghcup install ghc -u 'file:///home/mearwald/tmp/ghc-eff-patches/ghc-8.10.2-x86_64-deb10-linux.tar.xz' 8.10.2-eff
- example:
- GHC head CI bindists
- example:
ghcup install ghc -u 'https://gitlab.haskell.org/api/v4/projects/1/jobs/artifacts/master/raw/ghc-x86_64-fedora27-linux.tar.xz?job=validate-x86_64-linux-fedora27' head
- example:
- DWARF bindists
- example:
ghcup install ghc -u 'https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/8.10.2/ghc-8.10.2-x86_64-deb10-linux-dwarf.tar.xz' 8.10.2-dwarf
- example:
Since the version parser is pretty lax, 8.10.2-eff
and head
are both valid versions
and produce the binaries ghc-8.10.2-eff
and ghc-head
respectively.
GHCup always needs to know which version the bindist corresponds to (this is not automatically
detected).
Isolated installs
Ghcup also enables you to install a tool (GHC, Cabal, HLS, Stack) at an isolated location of your choosing. These installs, as the name suggests, are separate from your main installs and DO NOT conflict with them.
-
No symlinks are made to these isolated installed tools, you'd have to manually point to them wherever you intend to use them.
-
These installs, can also NOT be deleted from ghcup, you'd have to go and manually delete these.
You need to use the --isolate
or -i
flag followed by the directory path.
Examples:
-
install an isolated GHC version at location /home/user/isolated_dir/ghc/
ghcup install ghc 8.10.5 --isolate /home/user/isolated_dir/ghc
-
isolated install Cabal at a location you desire
ghcup install cabal --isolate /home/username/my_isolated_dir/
-
do an isolated install with a custom bindist
ghcup install ghc --isolate /home/username/my_isolated_dir/ -u 'https://gitlab.haskell.org/api/v4/projects/1/jobs/artifacts/master/raw/ghc-x86_64-fedora27-linux.tar.xz?job=validate-x86_64-linux-fedora27' head
-
isolated install HLS
ghcup install hls --isolate /home/username/dir/hls/
-
you can even compile ghc to an isolated location.
ghcup compile ghc -j 4 -v 9.0.1 -b 8.10.5 -i /home/username/my/dir/ghc
Continuous integration
On windows, ghcup can be installed automatically on a CI runner non-interactively like so:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force;[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072;Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([ScriptBlock]::Create((Invoke-WebRequest https://www.haskell.org/ghcup/sh/bootstrap-haskell.ps1 -UseBasicParsing))) -ArgumentList $false,$true,$true,$false,$false,$false,$false,"C:\"
On linux/darwin/freebsd, run the following on your runner:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://get-ghcup.haskell.org | BOOTSTRAP_HASKELL_NONINTERACTIVE=1 BOOTSTRAP_HASKELL_MINIMAL=1 sh
This will just install ghcup
and on windows additionally msys2
.
For the full list of env variables and parameters to tweak the script behavior, see:
Example github workflow
On github workflows you can use https://github.com/haskell/actions/
If you want to install ghcup manually though, here's an example config:
name: Haskell CI
on:
push:
branches: [ master ]
pull_request:
branches: [ master ]
jobs:
build-cabal:
runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
strategy:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
os: [ubuntu-latest, macOS-latest, windows-latest]
ghc: ['8.10.7', '9.0.1']
cabal: ['3.4.0.0']
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v2
- if: matrix.os == 'windows-latest'
name: Install ghcup on windows
run: Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force;[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072;Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([ScriptBlock]::Create((Invoke-WebRequest https://www.haskell.org/ghcup/sh/bootstrap-haskell.ps1 -UseBasicParsing))) -ArgumentList $false,$true,$true,$false,$false,$false,$false,"C:\"
- if: matrix.os == 'windows-latest'
name: Add ghcup to PATH
run: echo "/c/ghcup/bin" >> $GITHUB_PATH
shell: bash
- if: matrix.os != 'windows-latest'
name: Install ghcup on non-windows
run: curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://get-ghcup.haskell.org | BOOTSTRAP_HASKELL_NONINTERACTIVE=1 BOOTSTRAP_HASKELL_MINIMAL=1 sh
- name: Install ghc/cabal
run: |
ghcup install ghc ${{ matrix.ghc }}
ghcup install cabal ${{ matrix.cabal }}
shell: bash
- name: Update cabal index
run: cabal update
shell: bash
- name: Build
run: cabal build --enable-tests --enable-benchmarks
shell: bash
- name: Run tests
run: cabal test
shell: bash
GPG verification
GHCup supports verifying the GPG signature of the metadata file. The metadata file then contains SHA256 hashes of all downloads, so this is cryptographically secure.
First, obtain the gpg key:
gpg --batch --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys 7784930957807690A66EBDBE3786C5262ECB4A3F
Then verify the gpg key in one of these ways:
- find out where I live and visit me to do offline key signing
- figure out my mobile phone number and call me to verify the fingerprint
- more boring: contact me on Libera IRC (
maerwald
) and verify the fingerprint
Once you've verified the key, you have to figure out if you trust me.
If you trust me, then you can configure gpg in ~/.ghcup/config.yaml
:
gpg-setting: GPGLax # GPGStrict | GPGLax | GPGNone
In GPGStrict
mode, ghcup will fail if verification fails. In GPGLax
mode it will just print a warning.
You can also pass the mode via ghcup --gpg <strict|lax|none>
.
Tips and tricks
with_ghc wrapper (e.g. for HLS)
Due to some HLS bugs it's necessary that the ghc
in PATH
is the one defined in cabal.project
. With some simple shell functions, we can start our editor with the appropriate
path prepended.
For bash, in e.g. ~/.bashrc
define:
with_ghc() {
local np=$(ghcup --offline whereis -d ghc $1 || { ghcup --cache install ghc $1 && ghcup whereis -d ghc $1 ;})
if [ -e "${np}" ] ; then
shift
PATH="$np:$PATH" "$@"
else
>&2 echo "Cannot find or install GHC version $1"
return 1
fi
}
For fish shell, in e.g. ~/.config/fish/config.fish
define:
function with_ghc
set --local np (ghcup --offline whereis -d ghc $argv[1] ; or begin ghcup --cache install ghc $argv[1] ; and ghcup whereis -d ghc $argv[1] ; end)
if test -e "$np"
PATH="$np:$PATH" $argv[2..-1]
else
echo "Cannot find or install GHC version $argv[1]" 1>&2
return 1
end
end
Then start a new shell and issue:
# replace 'code' with your editor
with_ghc 8.10.5 code path/to/haskell/source
Cabal and HLS will now see 8.10.5
as the primary GHC, without the need to
run ghcup set
all the time when switching between projects.