Subject: Re: bug#65460: ghc/ghci are broken

From: Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2023 17:07:44 -0400

Hi,

Saku Laesvuori <[email-masked]> writes:

>> > Thanks! Adding gcc-toolchain to the profile fixed it, but shouldn't this
>> > be automatically brought in by `guix install ghc`? This does still feels
>> > like a bug to me, shouldn't gcc-toolchain be a part of ghcs native-inputs?
>
> native-inputs are for buildtime inputs and here ghc needs a c toolchain
> at runtime to compile another haskell program so gcc-toolchain should be
> in "normal" inputs.
>
>> I assume GHC can work with other toolchains, like Clang, so it's better
>> to be explicit about what you want to use.
>
> I think it would still be good to have a c toolchain as an input. Guix
> packages are, if I understand correctly, supposed to work without having
> to explicitly install their dependencies. If someone wants to use a
> different c toolchain than the default, they can use a package
> transformation to change it.
>
> Maybe we could even have the current ghc as a hidden package and have
> the public package wrap the hidden ghc adding gcc-toolchain to it's
> environment, so that changing the c toolchain wouldn't require
> rebuilding ghc.

For building tools requiring a compiler, the current expectation across
Guix packages is that the user provides the one it wants.  Even if using
GCC, you may want to use a different version, and rebuilding GHC just to
do so is... expensive.

I'm closing, but if you'd like this to be further discussed you could
start a thread on guix-devel.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim