Improving GHC's configuration logic and cross-compilation support with ghc-toolchain

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2024-10-04 01:30:04

Rodrigo worked on an internship with the GHC team at Well-Typed this summer. In this post he reports on his progress improving GHC’s configuration tooling as a step towards better cross-compiler support.

GHC, like most high-level language compilers, depends upon a set of tools like assemblers, linkers, and archivers for the production of machine code. Collectively these tools are known as a toolchain and capture a great deal of platform-dependent knowledge.

Traditionally, developers generate a ./configure script using the venerable autoconf tool, then users execute this script when they install a GHC binary distribution. The ./configure script determines the location of programs (such as the C compiler) and which options GHC will need to pass them.

For cross-compiling to a different platform, it would be highly valuable to users if GHC would become a runtime-retargetable compiler (like rustc and go). That is, the user should be able to download a single GHC binary distribution and use it to compile not only for their local machine, but also any other targets that GHC supports.