Manifold installation woes

[goldfirere]

I have found myself unable to install, despite lots of different approaches. I have GHC 8.10.5 and cabal-install 3.4.0.0.

• cabal install lhs2tex

This hums along for a bit, and then fails with a parse error in HsLexer:

src/HsLexer.lhs:75:39: error:
    parse error on input ‘-- |impossible "string"|’
   |
75 | > string (TeX _ _)              =  "" -- |impossible "string"|
   |      

The problem is that the comment looks like a Haddock comment, but isn't one.

• cabal unpack lhs2tex; cd lhs2tex; cabal install

This yields only

cabal: Error: Could not find module: Version with any suffix:
["gc","chs","hsc","x","y","ly","cpphs","hs","lhs","hsig","lhsig"]. If the
module is autogenerated it should be added to 'autogen-modules'.

which I have no idea what to do with.

• Trying cabal build in my local copy of lhs2TeX works, but hits the parse error. I fix that error (and quite a few others, all around comments that look Haddocky). Eventually, the build works. But then cabal install says cabal: filepath wildcard 'doc/Guide2.pdf' does not match any files. so I'm stuck again.

• I cloned the repo. cabal install leads to the "autogen-modules" error above. But I try the alternative instructions to ./configure and make. make fails not knowing about directory and filepath packages. I could probably install these manually, but I'd really prefer to have cabal do my installation, not make install, so I stop pursuing this option.

• I tried using ghc-8.8.3. This failed with the same parse error as ghc-8.10.5.

• I tried using ghc-9.0.1. Success! Oof.

I think the solution might simply be to get rid of comments that look Haddocky but aren't. Failing that, maybe increase the requirements on base so users know they need GHC 9?

[anfelor]

On my M1 Mac I got the current master branch (at commit 34301bed0a895691631ab3acd61808411fae0711) to build with:

> export C_INCLUDE_PATH="`xcrun --show-sdk-path`/usr/include/ffi"
> stack init
> stack build
> stack install

The first line is from https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/20592#note_391266 stack init selected lts-19.26 which uses GHC 9.0.2

[alexiscott]

stack init stack build stack install

Using stack worked well for me. I wasn't able to get far with cabal install lhs2tex.

[kosmikus]

I've added working CI and made a new release officially compatible with various GHC versions. Sorry for the trouble all of you've had getting this to work in the past.

[goldfirere]

Thanks, Andres!