4. Building from source

“I just want to build it!”

No problem. This recipe should build and install a working GHC with all the default settings. (unless you're on Windows, in which case go to Section 12, “Instructions for building under Windows”).

$ autoreconf[1]
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

For GHC, this will do a 2-stage bootstrap build of the compiler, with profiling libraries, and install the results in the default location (under /usr/local on Unix, for example).

The configure script is a standard GNU autoconf script, and accepts the usual options for changing install locations and the like. Run ./configure --help for a list of options.

If you want to do anything at all non-standard, or you want to do some development, read on...



[1] not necessary if you started from a source tarball