How do I install Haskell Stack locally?

Question

I am working on my school server and I need to install Haskell's stack. In the README file and on the website I could not find how to install locally. What can I do if I am not a sudo user?

Answer 1

You don't need superuser privileges to install stack; you can as well install it in your own home directory. All you need for this to work is a Linux system with GMP installed (which GHC depends on at a very fundamental level). If GMP is not installed – the admins really shouldn't have any concerns installing that. (Alternatively, follow these instructions to install GMP without root permissions.)

#!/bin/bash

# Stack installation script, adapted from:
# https://github.com/yantonov/install-ghc/blob/af0b968b9e8423efb152ccec4224821e29317710/ubuntu/install-ghc-ubuntu.md

DOWNLOADS_DIR=$HOME/Downloads
STACK_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/Development/bin"
mkdir -p ${STACK_INSTALL_DIR}
STACK_VERSION="2.1.3"  
STACK_ARCHITECTURE="x86_64"  
STACK_PLATFORM="linux"  

# Check that libgmp is installed. This is the main critical system-level
# dependency of the Haskell environment that may not be present.

function check_lib()
{
    echo "int main(){}" | gcc -o /dev/null -lgmp -x c -
    return $?
}

GMP_OK=false
if (ldconfig -p | grep -q "libgmp.so.10"); then
    GMP_VERSION_POSTFIX=""
    if (check_lib -lgmp); then GMP_OK=true; fi
elif (ldconfig -p | grep -q "libgmpxx.so.4"); then
    GMP_VERSION_POSTFIX="-gmp4"
    if (check_lib -lgmp); then GMP_OK=true; fi
fi


if [ $GMP_OK = false ]; then
    echo >&2 "Haskell requires the GNU multi-precision library (with headers)"
    echo >&2 "in version 4 or 10, but neither can be found. Try"
    echo >&2
    echo >&2 "$ sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev"
    echo >&2
    echo >&2 "or https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/265239/how-to-install-a-custom-gmp-lib-for-just-one-user"
    echo >&2
    exit 1
fi

STACK_DIST_FILENAME="stack-$STACK_VERSION-$STACK_PLATFORM-$STACK_ARCHITECTURE.tar.gz"  
STACK_DIST_UNZIPPED_DIR="stack-$STACK_VERSION-$STACK_PLATFORM-$STACK_ARCHITECTURE"
STACK_DIST_URL="https://www.stackage.org/stack/$STACK_PLATFORM-$STACK_ARCHITECTURE"
STACK_TARGET_DIR="stack-$STACK_VERSION"

cd $DOWNLOADS_DIR

curl -L -o $STACK_DIST_FILENAME $STACK_DIST_URL  
tar xvfz $STACK_DIST_FILENAME

# in case if error like this: 
#curl: (77) error setting certificate verify locations: CAfile: 
# /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt CApath: 
# ...
# create ~/.curlrc file
# and put this lines to it
# capath=/etc/ssl/certs/
# cacert=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

# move to home development dir  
rm -rf $STACK_INSTALL_DIR/$STACK_TARGET_DIR  
mv $STACK_DIST_UNZIPPED_DIR $STACK_INSTALL_DIR/$STACK_TARGET_DIR

cd $STACK_INSTALL_DIR  

# sym link
rm -rvi stack  
ln -s `pwd`/$STACK_TARGET_DIR stack  

# add to PATH environment  
STACK_HOME=$HOME/Development/bin/stack  
PATH=$STACK_HOME:$PATH

# clean up
cd $DOWNLOADS_DIR
rm -rf stack-$STACK_VERSION*

# install ghc
stack setup