GHC 6.12.1 only works with Cabal-install version 0.8 or later. Please upgrade if you have an older version of cabal-install.

If you have installed a standalone GHC before and are upgrading to 6.12.1, note that this release of GHC comes with fewer packages than before. The extra packages have to be installed separately.

For most users, we recommend installing the Haskell Platform instead of GHC. The current Haskell Platform release includes a recent GHC as well as some other tools (such as cabal), and a larger set of libraries that are known to work together. The GHC 6.12.1 release is aimed primarily at package maintainers and early adopters.

GHC is packaged for a number of operating systems and distributions. While they may lag behind the latest GHC release, advantages such as dependency checking and ease of uninstallation mean we recommend using them anyway, unless you have a particular need for new features or bug fixes.

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 ( /usr or /usr/local on a Unix system), then you'll need to use a .tar.bz2 binary bundle.

Supported platforms

Linux (x86)

Generic i386 Linux. This is a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation. ghc-6.12.1-i386-unknown-linux-n.tar.bz2 (102 MB)

Generic i386 Linux. You need to have a file /lib/libtinfo.so.5 to use this bindist. This is a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation. ghc-6.12.1-i386-unknown-linux-t.tar.bz2 (102 MB)



NOTE: If you have too old a version of libc, then you will get an error like "floating point exception" from the binaries in these bindists. You will need to either upgrade your libc (we're not sure what the minimum version required is, but 2.7 is known to work), or use a binary package built for your distribution instead.

Linux (x86_64)

Generic amd64 Linux. This is a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation. ghc-6.12.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-n.tar.bz2 (102 MB)

Generic amd64 Linux. You need to have a file /lib/libtinfo.so.5 to use this bindist. This is a complete build, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation. ghc-6.12.1-x86_64-unknown-linux-t.tar.bz2 (102 MB)



NOTE: If you have too old a version of libc, then you will get an error like "floating point exception" from the binaries in these bindists. You will need to either upgrade your libc (we're not sure what the minimum version required is, but 2.7 is known to work), or use a binary package built for your distribution instead.

Windows (x86) (standalone)

ghc-6.12.1-i386-windows.exe (63 MB); a Windows Installer for GHC 6.12.1.

This is a complete build, and should work for Microsoft Windows 2000, XP and Vista. It also includes support for compiling C++ files.

This installer will not overwrite previous installed versions of GHC, with the exception that the default handler for .lhs and .hs files will point to the most recently installed version.

MacOS X (Intel)

This is an installer for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). The package requires Xcode 3.1 (in particular, the "Unix Development Support") to be already installed. You can find Xcode 3.1 at http://developer.apple.com/ (or you may have a new enough version on your OS X installation DVD).

FreeBSD (x86)

Gabor PALI has provided binary distribution tarballs for FreeBSD 7 and 8. These are complete builds, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.

Note: These are not the same as the lang/ghc port. The packages require ports math/gmp, converters/libiconv, devel/gmake, lang/perl5.10, devel/autoconf262 to be already installed. For installation, set your prefix by "./configure --prefix=${PREFIX}" and install the binaries by "gmake install". For running the testsuite you will need the lang/python26 port as well.

If you have a 4.x version of GMP (installed from math/libgmp), then you will get an error like "libgmp.so.10 not found" from the binaries in these bindists. Upgrading your GMP port to 5.x by using the math/gmp port will solve this problem.

FreeBSD (x86_64)

Gabor PALI has provided binary distribution tarballs for FreeBSD 7 and 8. These are complete builds, including interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.

Note: These are not the same as the lang/ghc port. The packages require ports math/gmp, converters/libiconv, devel/gmake, lang/perl5.10, devel/autoconf262 to be already installed. For installation, set your prefix by "./configure --prefix=${PREFIX}" and install the binaries by "gmake install". For running the testsuite you will need the lang/python26 port as well.

If you have a 4.x version of GMP (installed from math/libgmp), then you will get an error like "libgmp.so.10 not found" from the binaries in these bindists. Upgrading your GMP port to 5.x by using the math/gmp port will solve this problem.

Community supported platforms

These platforms are supported by community members.

This is a full binary distribution for Solaris, prepared by Ben Lippmeier.

Please use gtar rather than tar to unpack the tarball, as tar may have problems with filenames longer than 100 characters.

There may be problems with gcc-3.4.x; see #951 for details.

There may be problems with gcc >= 4.3.x; see this page for details.

This is a binary distribution for OpenSolaris snv_129, prepared by Michael Lee.