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Wayne Van Son
Wayne Van Son

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haskell-language-server to void-packages

#voidlinux #haskell #compiler #debugging

I neded the haskell-language-server installed on my machine so I can edit *.hs files in VSCode so I get features like intellisense and syntax highlighting.

I'll go through the steps I took in order to troubleshoot and get a working version of haskell-language-server for x86_64, then additional fixes used in attempt to make it cross compile to armv7l and others.

I wrote a basic template for void-packages:

# Template file for 'haskell-language-server'
pkgname=haskell-language-server
version=0.8.0
revision=1
archs="x86_64"
build_style="haskell-stack"
short_desc="Haskell Language Server: Integration of ghcide and haskell-ide-engine"
maintainer="Wayne Van Son <waynevanson@gmail.com>"
license="Apache-2.0"
homepage="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server"
distfiles="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server/archive/${version}.tar.gz"
checksum="5ff053f0f4bb26b867fdc0b4071ba25c47eaa6febc9a4ef5b70a5a31c9433671"
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The most important part besides the source files is build_style="haskell-stack". This provides us with do_build() and do_install() hooks that force the correct versions of stack and ghc (Glorious Haskell Compiler).
We use this because the codebase we're compiling is a haskell codebase.

Dependencies

The documentation states that that:

On Linux you will need install a couple of extra libraries:

  • Unicode (ICU)
  • NCURSES
  • Zlib

Let's add these dependencies as make-depends

# Template file for 'haskell-language-server'
pkgname=haskell-language-server
version=0.8.0
revision=1
archs="x86_64"
build_style="haskell-stack"
makedepends="ncurses-libtinfo-devel icu-devel zlib-devel"
short_desc="Haskell Language Server: Integration of ghcide and haskell-ide-engine"
maintainer="Wayne Van Son <waynevanson@gmail.com>"
license="Apache-2.0"
homepage="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server"
distfiles="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server/archive/${version}.tar.gz"
checksum="5ff053f0f4bb26b867fdc0b4071ba25c47eaa6febc9a4ef5b70a5a31c9433671"
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We've got everything we need as a base, so let's kick of a build with

# initialize `masterdir`, contains `/{etc,lib,usr}`
./xbps-src binary-bootstrap
# trigger a build of the package
./xbps-src pkg haskell-language-server
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Let's figure out our first errors.

Errors

Error: Out of Memory

This is a problem with your machine, not the package or the compiler.

Run ./xbps-src pkg haskell-language-server to continue where it left off. If any files where compiled, they'll be reused and not recompiled.

If you run ./xbps-src pkg -f haskell-language-server they will be recompiled. I use this when I've made changes to the template that affect the build/install stages.

That's an easy fix, phew!

Error: Haskell related.

We're getting a lot of errors from the codebase, which is unusual in a working package. This is because we're not using the latest version of ghc, but one with long-term support (lts).

Running ghc --version points to version 8.8.4, which indeed is the GHC-lts at this point in time.

I noticed that the source files come with a bunch of stack-(n-n-n).yaml files. The version number indicates which version of GHC we need to use.

We need to use that one instead of stack.yaml, which was done by default.

To use stack-8.8.4.yaml, we need to pass a flag to the stack build and stack install commands. We can do this by assigning the stack flags to the variable make_build_args:

# Template file for 'haskell-language-server'
pkgname=haskell-language-server
version=0.8.0
revision=1
archs="x86_64"
build_style="haskell-stack"
make_build_args="--stack-yaml stack-8.8.4.yaml"
makedepends="ncurses-libtinfo-devel icu-devel zlib-devel"
short_desc="Haskell Language Server: Integration of ghcide and haskell-ide-engine"
maintainer="Wayne Van Son <waynevanson@gmail.com>"
license="Apache-2.0"
homepage="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server"
distfiles="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server/archive/${version}.tar.gz"
checksum="5ff053f0f4bb26b867fdc0b4071ba25c47eaa6febc9a4ef5b70a5a31c9433671"
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Let's build again using ./xbps-src pkg -f haskell-language-server and see what we get next.

Error: nopie

We're getting some crazy errors about the executables not being pie files. Here is the Wikipedia Article for reference.

The fix is that for every executable, we must specify the path to executable files produced by the do_install().

# Template file for 'haskell-language-server'
pkgname=haskell-language-server
version=0.8.0
revision=1
archs="x86_64"
build_style="haskell-stack"
make_build_args="--stack-yaml stack-8.8.4.yaml"
makedepends="ncurses-libtinfo-devel icu-devel zlib-devel"
short_desc="Haskell Language Server: Integration of ghcide and haskell-ide-engine"
maintainer="Wayne Van Son <waynevanson@gmail.com>"
license="Apache-2.0"
homepage="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server"
distfiles="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server/archive/${version}.tar.gz"
checksum="5ff053f0f4bb26b867fdc0b4071ba25c47eaa6febc9a4ef5b70a5a31c9433671"
nopie_files="
/usr/bin/haskell-language-server
/usr/bin/haskell-language-server-wrapper
/usr/bin/ghcide-bench
/usr/bin/ghcide
/usr/bin/ghcide-test-preprocessor
"
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Architecture Compatibility

DONE! It compiled, what a time to be alive.
void-packages/CONTRIBUTING.md explain that we should also try build for armv7l, but I always try build the following:

# defaults to `x86_64`, but never mention the
# arch if you're already using it;
# use for cross-compilation only
./xbps-src pkg -f haskell-language-server
./xbps-src -a x86-64-musl pkg -f haskell-language-server
./xbps-src -a armv7l pkg -f haskell-language-server
./xbps-src -a aarch64 pkg -f haskell-language-server
./xbps-src -a i868 pkg -f haskell-language-server
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armv7l

We purposefully restricted the architecture to x86_64, let's add aarch64 to the archs variable.

# Template file for 'haskell-language-server'
pkgname=haskell-language-server
version=0.8.0
revision=1
archs="x86_64 aarch64"
build_style="haskell-stack"
makedepends="ncurses-libtinfo-devel icu-devel zlib-devel"
short_desc="Haskell Language Server: Integration of ghcide and haskell-ide-engine"
maintainer="Wayne Van Son <waynevanson@gmail.com>"
license="Apache-2.0"
homepage="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server"
distfiles="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server/archive/${version}.tar.gz"
checksum="5ff053f0f4bb26b867fdc0b4071ba25c47eaa6febc9a4ef5b70a5a31c9433671"
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New build, let's run ./xbps-src -a aarch64 pkg -f haskell-language-server.

Error: ncursesw

It looks like we cannot find the ncursesw resource on this particular architecture. My experience indicates it's usually fixed with ln -sf /lib/libtinfo.so.5 /libtinfo.so.6, but the fix is for ncursesw, not tinfo so we will put the fix inside of the pre_build() hook.

# Template file for 'haskell-language-server'
pkgname=haskell-language-server
version=0.8.0
revision=1
archs="x86_64 armv7l"
build_style="haskell-stack"
make_build_args="--stack-yaml stack-8.8.4.yaml"
makedepends="ncurses-libtinfo-devel icu-devel zlib-devel"
short_desc="Haskell Language Server: Integration of ghcide and haskell-ide-engine"
maintainer="Wayne Van Son <waynevanson@gmail.com>"
license="Apache-2.0"
homepage="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server"
distfiles="https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server/archive/${version}.tar.gz"
checksum="5ff053f0f4bb26b867fdc0b4071ba25c47eaa6febc9a4ef5b70a5a31c9433671"
nopie_files="
/usr/bin/haskell-language-server
/usr/bin/haskell-language-server-wrapper
/usr/bin/ghcide-bench
/usr/bin/ghcide
/usr/bin/ghcide-test-preprocessor
"

pre_build() {
    # fixes `/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lncursesw`
    if [ "$XBPS_TARGET_MACHINE" != "x86_64" ] && [ -f "/lib/libncursesw.so" ]; then
        ln -sf /lib/libncursesw.so.6.2 /lib/libncursesw.so
    fi
}
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A haskell dependency was looking for /lib/libncursesw.so, so we created a symbolic link (like a shortcut in Windows) to /lib/libncursesw.so.6.2.

Running ./xbps-src pkg haskell-language-server brings us to our next error.

Error: network

This is as far as I got with the armv7l version. It's also a problem on all the others.

Now I'm not sure what to do here.

network                          > configure
network                          > [1 of 2] Compiling Main             ( /tmp/stack-8ee1647aa5b6024f/network-3.1.1.1/Setup.hs, /tmp/stack-8ee1647aa5b6024f/network-3.1.1.1/.stack-work/dist/x86_64-linux/Cabal-3.0.1.0/setup/Main.o )
network                          > [2 of 2] Compiling StackSetupShim   ( /builddir/haskell-language-server-0.8.0/.stack/setup-exe-src/setup-shim-mPHDZzAJ.hs, /tmp/stack-8ee1647aa5b6024f/network-3.1.1.1/.stack-work/dist/x86_64-linux/Cabal-3.0.1.0/setup/StackSetupShim.o )
network                          > Linking /tmp/stack-8ee1647aa5b6024f/network-3.1.1.1/.stack-work/dist/x86_64-linux/Cabal-3.0.1.0/setup/setup ...
network                          > Configuring network-3.1.1.1...
network                          > configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: --with-compiler
network                          > checking build system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
network                          > checking host system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
network                          > checking for gcc... /usr/bin/cc
network                          > checking whether the C compiler works... no
network                          > configure: error: in `/tmp/stack-8ee1647aa5b6024f/network-3.1.1.1/.stack-work/dist/x86_64-linux/Cabal-3.0.1.0/build':
network                          > configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
network                          > See `config.log' for more details
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