Distribution 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.

While they may lag behind the latest GHC release, we recommend using them anyway for the above reasons, unless you have a particular need for new features or bug fixes.

Available Packages

Packages are available for the following systems:

Arch Linux (i386, amd64)

GHC packages are in the Arch Linux “extra” repository.

The packages are maintained by Vesa Kaihlavirta and Don Stewart. For more information on Arch Haskell packaging, see the Haskell package guidelines.

Debian (alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc)

All Debian platforms have ghc6 packages in the main Debian archive. Use apt-get update && apt-get install ghc6 ghc6-prof ghc6-doc to install them as normal; you can also get the library sources in the ghc6-libsrc package.

The extralibs, as well as various other libraries, are available as libghc6-library-dev. You may also want libghc6-library-prof and libghc6-library-doc for the profiling libraries and documentation respectively, but sometimes this will be included in the main package.

The packages are maintained by Kari Pahula. Debian Haskell packaging is coordinated on the Debian Haskell mailing list.

Fedora and EPEL (aarch64, i386, ppc64le, s390x, x86_64)

Fedora and RHEL EPEL users can install with dnf install ghc. The packages are maintained by Jens Petersen (Fedora Haskell SIG).

There are also ghc8.10, ghc9.0, ghc9.2, ghc9.4, and ghc9.6 packages for Fedora and EPEL 9, which can be parallel installed.

Jens Petersen also maintains a set of COPR packages, for Fedora and EPEL (RHEL, CentOS Stream, etc).

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.

The packages are maintained by . For more information on FreeBSD Haskell packaging, see the Haskell FreeBSD Effort.

Gentoo (alpha, amd64, hppa, ia64, ppc, ppc64, sparc, x86, x86 fbsd)

GHC is available as an ebuild. Run emerge dev-lang/ghc to get the latest version Gentoo considers stable; later versions may be available but masked.

The packages are maintained by the Gentoo Haskell team.

macOS (amd64)

For macOS we provide binary tarballs, available on the download page for each release. We recommend using these installers rather than using the alternatives below.

GHC is also available via the MacPorts and Homebrew systems.

NetBSD (x86)

GHC 7.6 is in the NetBSD package tree as lang/ghc7. No newer releases are available.

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.

Nix/NixOS (i386, amd64)

GHC is included in nixpkgs as the ghc derivation.

OpenBSD (i386)

GHC is included in the OpenBSD ports tree as lang/ghc. Make sure your ports tree is up to date, and say cd /usr/ports/lang/ghc && make install.

The packages are maintained by Don Stewart.

openSUSE (i386, amd64)

RPMs are available from openSUSE.

Ubuntu (amd64, i386, powerpc)

Ubuntu has GHC packages in its universe repository. Enable the universe repository in Synaptics, and then install the ghc, ghc-prof and ghc-doc packages.

The extralibs, as well as various other libraries, are available as libghc-library-dev. You may also want libghc-library-prof and libghc-library-doc for the profiling libraries and documentation respectively. You can also get the library sources in the ghc-libsrc package.

Alternatively, you can install from the command line: use apt-get update && apt-get install ghc ghc-prof ghc-doc to install GHC.

Finally, a variety of older and newer releases are available in hvr’s PPA. This can be enabled with,

Ubuntu generally gets its Haskell packages from Debian. See also the Ubuntu Haskell page.