ghc.dev

What It Is

GHC Development (ghc.dev) is a cheatsheet for Glasgow Haskell Compiler contributors, not a general-purpose development tool or commercial SaaS. It gathers the most common GHC development tasks onto a single page: fetching the source code, preparing dependencies, building the compiler, running tests, debugging, generating documentation, and participating in community collaboration.

Core Features and Ecosystem

The page links directly to the GHC Wiki, the User's Guide generated from the master branch, Haddock documentation for boot libraries, and provides commands for cloning the source code from GHC’s own GitLab. For building, it uses ./boot, ./configure, cabal v2-update, and hadrian/build, while also reminding users that GHC uses git submodules. For Nix users, the documentation recommends ghc.nix to install dependencies such as alex, happy, and texlive. The testing and debugging sections include commands for running specific tests, accepting failed output, enabling typechecker and renamer traces, and using the Devel2 flavor to enable assertions.

Pricing and Openness

The main content does not mention any pricing, plans, or payment methods. The page provides access to its GitHub source, while the GHC source code is hosted on GitLab, making it more like open-source community infrastructure and public documentation. It has no API/SDK and no hosted control panel; its main value lies in documenting command-line workflows.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are that it is highly focused, its commands can be copied directly, it covers the most common contributor workflows, and it links to GitLab issues, merge requests, ghc-proposals, the ghc-devs mailing list, and IRC. The downside is that it is clearly designed as a quick reference: users unfamiliar with Haskell, the GHC build system, Nix, or Hadrian may still need to read the Wiki and official guides. The page also does not provide common error explanations, platform-specific differences, or commercial support information.

Who It’s For and Access from China

It is best suited to advanced Haskell developers preparing to contribute to GHC, fix bugs, run the test suite, or debug the compiler’s internal workflows. For users who only want to learn Haskell syntax or use GHC to compile projects, the official User's Guide or beginner tutorials are more appropriate. Access from mainland China is not discussed in the main content; because it involves external services such as GitLab, GitHub, and IRC, actual stability may depend on the local network environment and should be verified from your own location.