Version 5.04.2 (released 4 December 2002)

The 5 series features some major changes over the 4 series: in short, an interactive development environment, and significantly faster compilation for large programs. 5.04.2 is the latest stable member of this series.

Online Docs

• Release Notes (vs. 5.02.x)
• Building Guide
• User's Guide & Libraries

Downloads

• The source distribution needs an installed GHC 4.08.X or 5.X to build. If there isn't a binary distribution for your platform (any version), then you'll need to consult the section on Porting GHC in the Building Guide.

• 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 (usually /usr or /usr/local), then you'll need to use the .tar.bz2 binary bundle.

Source Distribution

• ghc-5.04.2-src.tar.bz2 (4.5 Mb).

x86/Linux

• RPMs for RedHat Linux/x86 8.0 (these may also work with RedHat 7.3) from Manuel Chakravarty:
  • source RPM
  • base RPM
  • profiling libraries RPM
  • documentation RPM
• RPMs for RedHat Linux/x86 7.2 from Jeff Lewis:
  • source RPM
  • base RPM
  • profiling libraries RPM
  • documentation RPM
• Binary tar for Linux/x86 with glibc 2.2 (a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation): .tar.bz2 (15.9 Mb). This build was done on a RedHat 7.2 box.

  NOTE: you need the following libraries to use this distribution: libreadline.so.4, libncurses.so.5. These come as standard on RedHat 7.2, at least.

Sparc/Solaris

NOTE: you must use GCC 2.95 on Sparc. There is a known bug with GCC 3.2 and later which causes incorrect code to be generated.

• ghc-5.04.2-sparc-sun-solaris2.tar.bz2 (21.7 Mb)

This is a complete build, with profiling libraries and docs.

NOTE: you'll need libcurses.so.1, which resolves to /usr/lib/libcurses.so.1 on our build machine. You should ensure you have this before you start, since without it GHC won't work at all.

Windows

• ghc-5-04-2.msi (~35 Mb)

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:

• Windows 95,98 and ME version
• Windows NT and 2000 version

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

x86/FreeBSD

FreeBSD users can install a binary package of ghc by saying 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.

x86/OpenBSD

• ghc-5.04.2.tgz (binary package, install with pkg_add ghc-5.04.2.tgz).
• ghc-5.04.2-port.tar.bz2 (the port that was used to build it).
• ghc-doc-5.04.2.tgz (the documentation package, install with pkg_add ghc-doc-5.04.2).
• ghc-5.04.2-i386-unknown-openbsd.tar.bz2 (.tar.bz2 binary package, use instead of the binary package above if you're a non-root user or need to install somewhere other than /usr/local).

MacOS X 10.2 (Jaguar)

• GHC.5.04.2.dmg

It's a double-clickable disk image containing an Apple Installer Package (.pkg). It includes profiling & GHCi, but no documentation (use the online docs for now). GHCi is now statically linked with Readline, but the readline library itself is not included, so you will have to install that seperately if you link anything with -package util.

MacOS X packages were prepared by Wolfgang Thaller.