GHC musl

Unofficial and untested binary distributions of GHC on Alpine Linux.

The multi‑arch (linux/amd64, linux/arm64/v8) docker image used to build the statically linked Linux amd64 and arm64 binary releases of

• Pandoc
• Stack
• Juvix

Credit to

• @odidev for ghc-bootstrap-aarch64¹
  and
• @neosimsim for neosimsim—Docker build images

who laid the groundwork for this.

Credit to

• Celeste of Alpine for GHC bootstrap riscv64²

who made it possible to add linux/riscv64 images (GHC versions ≥ 9.10.1).

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Install
• Usage
• Similar projects
• Contributing
• License

Prerequisites

This project requires an installation of docker.

Install

To install docker, follow the instructions for your platform:

• Install Docker Engine | Docker Documentation > Supported platforms
• Post-installation steps for Linux

Usage

Build image

latest:

docker build \
  -t ghc-musl \
  -f dockerfiles/9.12.2.Dockerfile .

version:

docker build \
  -t ghc-musl:MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH \
  -f dockerfiles/MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.Dockerfile .

For MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH GHC versions 8.8.4, 8.10.1 and ≥ 8.10.4.

👉 See the Version Matrix for detailed information.

Run container

self built:

docker run --rm -ti ghc-musl:{latest,MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH}

from Quay:

docker run --rm -ti quay.io/benz0li/ghc-musl:{latest,MAJOR[.MINOR[.PATCH]]}[-int-native]

from Docker Hub:

docker run --rm -ti docker.io/benz0li/ghc-musl:{latest,MAJOR[.MINOR[.PATCH]]}[-int-native]

from GitLab (b-data GmbH):

docker run --rm -ti glcr.b-data.ch/ghc/ghc-musl:{latest,MAJOR[.MINOR[.PATCH]]}[-int-native]

As of 2023‑08‑12, the images (versions 9.2.8, 9.4.6, 9.6.2 and later) also include the Haskell Tool Stack (Stack).

On 2024‑02‑23, the binary distribution of GHC version 9.8.2 was released for Alpine Linux (AArch64).
❗ Use flags --no-install-ghc --system-ghc with Stack (GHC versions < 9.8.2) to ensure that only the GHC available in the container is used.

GMP licensing restrictions

The regular images produce binaries linked against the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library (GMP), which is used by default by the integer-gmp library to provide a big-integer implementation for Haskell.

Unlike most Haskell code, which is licensed under the permissive BSD3 license, the GMP library is licensed under LGPL. This means resulting statically linked binaries must be provided with source code or object files.

If that is not acceptable for your situation, use images with the int-native subtag. These images provide a GHC that links against the Haskell-native big-integer backend and produces statically linked binaries that are not subject to GMP's licensing restrictions.
ℹ️ Available for versions 9.6.7, 9.8.4, 9.10.1, 9.12.2 and later.

Default linker

All images use ld.bfd (the GNU linker) by default. Regarding ld.lld (the LLVM linker) see issue #13.

Dev Containers

The default Dev Container is meant to work on this repository.

Any other configuration is a custom GHC container based on GHC musl.

For further information, see Dev Containers.

Similar projects

• utdemir/ghc-musl
• fpco/alpine-haskell-stack

What makes this project different:

1. Multi‑arch: linux/amd64, linux/arm64/v8
2. Built using Hadrian³, from source, without docs
3. Built using the LLVM backend. Flavours:
   • regular images: perf+split_sections+llvm
   • int-native subtag: perf+split_sections+llvm+native_bignum

Interesting to read:

• Improving Haskell’s big numbers support by @hsyl20
• lsupg Static Builds With GHC 9 by @TravisCardwell
  • especially Part 2 and Part 3

Contributing

PRs accepted. Please submit to the GitLab repository.

This project follows the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct.

License

Copyright © 2021 Olivier Benz

Distributed under the terms of the MIT License.

Footnotes

1. Porting GHC to Linux/AArch64 ↩

2. Porting GHC to Linux/RISC-V (64-bit) ↩

3. GHC versions ≥ 9.2.8. ↩