Appendix A. Installing GHC and Haskell Libraries
The instructions in this appendix are based on our experience installing GHC and other software in late 2008. Installation instructions inevitably become dated quickly; please bear this in mind as you read.
Installing GHC
Because GHC runs on a large number of platforms, we focus on a handful of the most popular.
Windows
The prebuilt binary packages of GHC should work on Windows Vista and XP (even Windows 2000). We have installed GHC 6.8.3 under Windows XP Service Pack 2; the following paragraphs detail the steps we followed.
How much room does GHC need?
On Windows, GHC requires about 400 MB of disk space. The exact amount will vary from release to release.
Our first step is to visit the GHC at http://www.haskell.org/ghcdownload.html (see Figure A-1) and follow the link to the current stable release. Scroll down to the section entitled “Binary packages,” and then again to the subsection for Windows. Download the installer; in our case, it’s named ghc-6.8.3-i386-windows.exe.
Figure A-1. Screenshot of Firefox, displaying the GHC download page
After the installer has downloaded, double-click it to start the installation process. This involves stepping through a normal Windows installer wizard (see Figure A-2).
Figure A-2. Screenshot of the GHC installation ...
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