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

When I try to build zlib using cabal...

$ cabal install zlib

I get the following output:

Resolving dependencies...
Downloading zlib-0.5.3.2...
Configuring zlib-0.5.3.2...
Preprocessing library zlib-0.5.3.2...
Stream.hsc:86:21: error: missing binary operator before token "("
Stream.hsc: In function ‘main’:
Stream.hsc:86:21: error: missing binary operator before token "("
Stream.hsc:86:21: error: missing binary operator before token "("
compiling dist/build/Codec/Compression/Zlib/Stream_hsc_make.c failed (exit code 1)
command was: /usr/bin/gcc -c dist/build/Codec/Compression/Zlib/Stream_hsc_make.c -o dist/build/Codec/Compression/Zlib/Stream_hsc_make.o -fno-stack-protector -fno-stack-protector -D__GLASGOW_HASKELL__=700 -Dlinux_BUILD_OS -Dlinux_HOST_OS -Dx86_64_BUILD_ARCH -Dx86_64_HOST_ARCH -I/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/bytestring-0.9.1.10/include -I/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/base-4.3.1.0/include -I/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/include -I/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/include -I/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/include/
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
zlib-0.5.3.2 failed during the building phase. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1

Can anyone shed some light on this build error?

---

Edit: Here's a snippet from Stream.hsc with line numbers:

 82 import Foreign
 83          ( Word8, Ptr, nullPtr, plusPtr, peekByteOff, pokeByteOff, mallocBy    tes  
 84          , ForeignPtr, FinalizerPtr, newForeignPtr_, addForeignPtrFinalizer
 85          , withForeignPtr, touchForeignPtr )
 86 #if MIN_VERSION_base(4,4,0)
 87 import Foreign.ForeignPtr.Unsafe ( unsafeForeignPtrToPtr )
 88 import System.IO.Unsafe          ( unsafePerformIO )
 89 #else
 90 import Foreign ( unsafeForeignPtrToPtr, unsafePerformIO )
 91 #endif

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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 3

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.