<chapter id="faq">
  <title>GHC FAQ</title>

  <para>This section has the answers to questions that get asked
  regularly on the GHC mailing lists, in no particular order.  Please
  let us know if you think there's a question/answer that should be
  added here.</para>
    
  <variablelist>
    <varlistentry>
      <term>How do I port GHC to platform X?</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>There are two distinct possibilities: either</para>
	<itemizedlist>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>The hardware architecture for your system is already
	    supported by GHC, but you're running an OS that isn't
	    supported (or perhaps has been supported in the past, but
	    currently isn't).  This is the easiest type of porting
	    job, but it still requires some careful
	    bootstrapping.</para>
	  </listitem>

	  <listitem>
	    <para>Your system's hardware architecture isn't supported
	    by GHC.  This will be a more difficult port (though by
	    comparison perhaps not as difficult as porting
	    gcc).</para>
	  </listitem>
	</itemizedlist>

	<para>Both ways require you to bootrap from intermediate
	<literal>HC</literal> files: these are the stylised C files
	generated by GHC when it compiles Haskell source.  Basically
	the idea is to take the HC files for GHC itself to the target
	machine and compile them with <literal>gcc</literal> to get a
	working GHC, and go from there.</para>

	<para>The <ulink
	url="http://www.haskell.org/ghc/latest/building/building-guide.html">Building
	Guide</ulink> has all the details on how to bootstrap GHC on a
	new platform.</para>

      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
    
    <varlistentry>
      <term>Do I have to recompile all my code if I upgrade
      GHC?</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>Yes.  There are two reasons for this:</para>
	<itemizedlist>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>GHC does a lot of cross-module optimisation, so
	    compiled code will include parts of the libraries it was
	    compiled against (including the Prelude), so will be
	    deeply tied to the actual version of those libraries it
	    was compiled against.  When you upgrade GHC, the libraries
	    may change; even if the external interface of the
	    libraries doesn't change, sometimes internal details may
	    change because GHC optimised the code in the library
	    differently.</para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>We sometimes change the ABI (application binary
	    interface) between versions of GHC.  Code compiled with
	    one version of GHC is not necessarily compatible with code
	    compiled by a different version, even if you arrange to
	    keep the same libraries.</para>
	  </listitem>
	</itemizedlist>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Why doesn't GHC use shared libraries?</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>The subject of shared libraries has come up several
        times in the past &mdash; take a look through the mailing-list
        archives for some of the previous discussions. The upshot is
        that shared libraries wouldn't really buy much unless you
        really need to save the disk space: in all other
        considerations, static linking comes out better.</para>
	  
        <para>Unfortunately GHC-compiled libraries are very tightly
        coupled, which means it's unlikely you'd be able to swap out a
        shared library for a newer version unless it was compiled with
        <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> the same compiler and set of
        libraries as the old version.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>I can't get string gaps to work</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>If you're also using CPP, beware of the known pitfall
	with string gaps mentioned in <xref
	linkend="cpp-string-gaps">.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>GHCi complains about missing symbols like
      <literal>CC_LIST</literal> when loading a previously compiled .o
      file.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para> This probably means the .o files in question were
        compiled for profiling (with <option>-prof</option>).  Workaround:
        recompile them without profiling.  We really ought to detect
        this situation and give a proper error message.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Linking a program causes the following error on Linux:
      <literal>/usr/bin/ld: cannot open -lgmp: No such file or
      directory</literal></term>
      <listitem>
	<para>The problem is that your system doesn't have the GMP
        library installed.  If this is a RedHat distribution, install
        the RedHat-supplied <literal>gmp-devel</literal> package, and
        the <literal>gmp</literal> package if you don't already have
        it.  There have been reports that installing the RedHat
        packages also works for SuSE (SuSE don't supply a shared gmp
        library).</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>I Can't run GHCi on Linux, because it complains about a
      missing <literal>libreadline.so.3</literal>.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>The "correct" fix for this problem is to install the
        correct RPM for the particular flavour of Linux on your
        machine.  If this isn't an option, however, there is a hack
        that might work: make a symbolic link from
        <filename>libreadline.so.4</filename> to
        <filename>libreadline.so.3</filename> in
        <literal>/usr/lib</literal>.  We tried this on a SuSE 7.1 box
        and it seemed to work, but YMMV.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Solaris users may sometimes get link errors due to
      libraries needed by GNU Readline.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>We suggest you try linking in some combination of the
        <literal>termcap</literal>, <literal>curses</literal> and
        <literal>ncurses</literal> libraries, by giving
        <literal>-ltermcap</literal>, <literal>-lcurses</literal> and
        <literal>-lncurses</literal> respectively.  If you encounter
        this problem, we would appreciate feedback on it, since we
        don't fully understand what's going on here.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
    
    <varlistentry>
      <term>When I try to start ghci (probably one I compiled myself)
      it says <literal>ghc-5.02: not built for interactive
      use</literal></term>
      <listitem>
	<para>To build a working ghci, you need to build GHC 5.02 with
        itself; the above message appears if you build it with 4.08.X,
        for example.  It'll still work fine for batch-mode
        compilation, though.  Note that you really must build with
        exactly the same version of the compiler.  Building 5.02 with
        5.00.2, for example, may or may not give a working interactive
        system; it probably won't, and certainly isn't supported.
        Note also that you can build 5.02 with any older compiler,
        back to 4.08.1, if you don't want a working interactive
        system; that's OK, and supported.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>
   
    <varlistentry>
      <term>When I use a foreign function that takes or returns a
      float, it gives the wrong answer, or crashes.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>You should use the <option>-#include</option> option to
	bring the correct prototype into scope (see <xref
	linkend="options-C-compiler">).</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>My program that uses a really large heap crashes on
      Windows.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>For utterly horrible reasons, programs that use more
        than 128Mb of heap won't work when compiled dynamically on
        Windows (they should be fine statically compiled).</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>GHC doesn't like filenames containing
      <literal>+</literal>.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>Indeed not. You could change <literal>+</literal> to
	<literal>p</literal> or <literal>plus</literal>.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>When I open a FIFO (named pipe) and try to read from it, I
      get EOF immediately.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>This is a consequence of the fact that GHC opens the
        FIFO in non-blocking mode.  The behaviour varies from OS to
        OS: on Linux and Solaris you can wait for a writer by doing an
        explicit <literal>threadWaitRead</literal> on the file
        descriptor (gotten from <literal>Posix.handleToFd</literal>)
        before the first read, but this doesn't work on FreeBSD
        (although rumour has it that recent versions of FreeBSD
        changed the behavour to match other OSs).  A workaround for
        all systems is to open the FIFO for writing yourself, before
        (or at the same time as) opening it for reading.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>When I <literal>foreign import</literal> a function that
      returns <literal>char</literal> or <literal>short</literal>, I
      get garbage back.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>This is a known bug in GHC versions prior to 5.02.2.
        GHC doesn't mask out the more significant bits of the result.
        It doesn't manifest with gcc 2.95, but apparently shows up
        with g++ and gcc 3.0.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>My program is failing with <literal>head []</literal>, or
      an array bounds error, or some other random error, and I have no
      idea how to find the bug.  Can you help?</term>

      <listitem>
	<para>Compile your program with <literal>-prof
-auto-all</literal> (make sure you have the profiling libraries
installed), and run it with <literal>+RTS -xc -RTS</literal> to get a
&ldquo;stack trace&rdquo; at the point at which the exception was
raised.  See <xref linkend="rts-options-debugging"> for more
details.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>How do I increase the heap size permanently for a given
      binary?</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>See <xref linkend="rts-hooks">.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>I'm trying to compile my program for parallel execution
      with the <option>-parallel</option>, and GHC complains with an
      error like &ldquo;failed to load interface file for
      Prelude&rdquo;.</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>GHC doesn't ship with support for parallel execution,
	that support is provided separately by the <ulink
							  url="http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~dsg/gph/">GPH</ulink> project.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>When is it safe to use
      <literal>unsafePerformIO</literal>?</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>We'll give two answers to this question, each of which
	may be helpful.  These criteria are not rigorous in any real
	sense (you'd need a formal semantics for Haskell in order to
	give a proper answer to this question), but should give you a
	feel for the kind of things you can and cannot do with
	<literal>unsafePerformIO</literal>.</para>
	
	<itemizedlist>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>It is safe to implement a function or API using
	    <literal>unsafePerformIO</literal> if you could imagine
	    also implementing the same function or API in Haskell
	    without using <literal>unsafePerformIO</literal> (forget
	    about efficiency, just consider the semantics).</para>
	  </listitem>

	  <listitem>
	    <para>In pure Haskell, the value of a function depends
	    only on the values of its arguments (and free variables,
	    if it has any).  If you can implement the function using
	    <literal>unsafePerformIO</literal> and still retain this
	    invariant, then you're probably using
	    <literal>unsafePerformIO</literal> in a safe way.  Note
	    that you need only consider the
	    <emphasis>observable</emphasis> values of the arguments
	    and result.</para>
	  </listitem>
	</itemizedlist>
	
	<para>For more information, see <ulink
	url="http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/glasgow-haskell-users/2002-July/003681.html">this
	thread</ulink>.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

    <varlistentry>
      <term>Why does linking take so long?</term>
      <listitem>
	<para>Linking a small program should take no more than a few
	seconds.  Larger programs can take longer, but even linking
	GHC itself only takes 3-4 seconds on our development
	machines.</para>
	
	<para>Long link times have been attributed to using Sun's
	linker on Solaris, as compared to GNU <command>ld</command>
	which appears to be much faster.  So if you're on a Sun box,
	try switching to GNU <command>ld</command>.  <ulink
	url="http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/glasgow-haskell-users/2002-November/004477.html">This
	article</ulink> from the mailing list has more
	information.</para>
      </listitem>
    </varlistentry>

  </variablelist>
</chapter>



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