Failed to install ghc8.0 and ghc8.2 on ubuntu-24.04

[July541]

Github runners currently switched ubuntu-latest from ubuntu-22.04 to ubuntu-24.04, which made ghc8.0 and ghc 8.2 install failed. See debug log here.

That is because libncurses5 and libtinfo5 install failed:

setup/src/installer.ts

Lines 278 to 286 in dd344bc

	async function aptLibNCurses5(): Promise<boolean> {
	core.info(
	`Installing libcurses5 and libtinfo5 using apt-get (for ghc < 8.3)`
	);
	const returnCode = await exec(
	`sudo -- sh -c "apt-get update && apt-get -y install libncurses5 libtinfo5"`
	);
	return returnCode === 0;

And then /usr/local/.ghcup/tmp/ghcup-3ba2aace02c1cc3e/usr/local/.ghcup/ghc/8.2.2/lib/ghc-8.2.2/bin/ghc-pkg: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory.

Related issue: haskell/ghcup-hs#947

[andreasabel]

Thanks for the heads up!

So I suppose GHC 8.0 and 8.2 will become unsupported. (They are already not supported by latest Stack anymore.)
Or do you know an easy fix?

[July541]

Adding an extra source can fix it, see my test here.

But I'm not sure if it is worth to do.

[andreasabel]

Well if it is just one line...
I am happy to get this as a PR (after some cleanup and maybe a comment added to the deb command that this is necessary for ubuntu 24.04.