zlib build error with GHC

Question

I\'m using a VM with the following configuration:

• Arch Linux (3.0-ARCH kernel)
• GHC 7.0.3
• cabal-install 0.10.2
• Cabal library 1.10.1.0

Answer 1

On Ubuntu, I fixed (or really, avoided) a similar error with

sudo apt-get install libghc-zlib-dev  libghc-zlib-bindings-dev

(I don't know if both are needed.)

Answer 2

I don't understand this error, but it happened to me also earlier today while trying to install Agda 2.3 using GHC 7.4. Saizan from #agda suggested that I try

cabal unpack zlib
cd zlib-0.5.3.2/
runghc Setup configure --user; runghc Setup build; runghc Setup install

This proved effective. But I'm still in the dark about what's actually the problem.

Still, as it worked, I thought I'd share.

Answer 3

The most likely reason is that the zlib C library headers are missing on your machine. You might instead try to use the Arch Linux "Haskell Platform" or haskell-zlib packages, which resolve C dependencies for you.

Answer 4

For some reason, the MIN_VERSION_base macro doesn't get expanded, thus the preprocessor sees the condition MIN_VERSION_base(4,4,0) which it of course cannot handle. I've not yet found out why the macro isn't expanded, but workarounds are

1. install zlib-0.5.3.1 instead
2. unpack the tarball and edit Codec/Compression/Zlib/Stream.hsc to remove the offending macro (you're using 7.0.3, so your base version is 4.3.1.0, you can replace the macro with 0)

Edit: After poking around a bit, I found out that to hide these preprocessor directives, which aren't intended for hsc2hs to process, they have to be masked by an extra '#'. Bug report underway.

Answer 5

I'm still encountering this with the haskell package zlib-0.5.4.2 on GHC 7.8.4. I think the issue is a non-standard location of the library. I solved it by hand-installing zlib 1.2.8 and then doing:

cabal install zlib --extra-lib-dirs=/usr/local/lib --extra-include-dir=/usr/local/include