ghcup install ghc 8.0.2 fails on Github Actions

[robx]

The CI action on github.com/PostgREST/configurator-pg is failing to install ghc-8.0.2, and I'm a bit stuck figuring out why.

I hope it's appropriate to report this here, happy to take it elsewhere if preferable.

• This worked in the past, it doesn't seem like code changes in the repositories caused this to fail
• Newer GHC versions install fine using with the same workflow
• The workflow is pretty barebones: https://github.com/PostgREST/configurator-pg/blob/master/.github/workflows/haskell.yml. The only thing that happens before the call to ghcup install ghc 8.0.2 is to check out the source repository.

Debug results so far:

• ghcup upgrade does nothing, already up-to-date
• I dumped the log files; they end with

Info: Installing GHC (this may take a while)
Debug: Running sh with arguments ["./configure","--prefix=/usr/local/.ghcup/ghc/8.0.2"]
Debug: Running gmake with arguments ["DESTDIR=/usr/local/.ghcup/tmp/ghcup-60ce8deb918b9668","install"]
Error: (https://errors.haskell.org/messages/GHCup-00841) Process "gmake" with arguments ["DESTDIR=/usr/local/.ghcup/tmp/ghcup-60ce8deb918b9668",
                                "install"] failed with exit code 2.

• gmake is available, version 4.3

More details:

• debug PR fix CI (WIP) PostgREST/configurator-pg#21
• failed run https://github.com/PostgREST/configurator-pg/actions/runs/7131635134/job/19420568108

[hasufell]

/usr/local/.ghcup/tmp/ghcup-27aab4df8c9b048c/usr/local/.ghcup/ghc/8.0.2/lib/ghc-8.0.2/bin/ghc-pkg: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Some distros dropped support for ncurses5, rendering old bindists broken.

Also see:

• Build fresh versions of old bindists #903
• The installation docs for Ubuntu need new instructions for Ubuntu 23.10 #902

[robx]

I see, thanks for the info! It's in the logs, too

/usr/local/.ghcup/tmp/ghcup-27aab4df8c9b048c/usr/local/.ghcup/ghc/8.0.2/lib/ghc-8.0.2/bin/ghc-pkg: error while loading shared libraries: libtinfo.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

In our case it's not critical for this to keep working, okay from my side to close this issue.

Do you think it'd be easy to improve error messages here to make it clearer what's going wrong? But between the log message and this issue, I should imagine it's possible for others to figure this out.

[hasufell]

Do you think it'd be easy to improve error messages here

That would mean we have to parse the output log. I'm not a fan, since it's very fuzzy.

Another solution is to be more verbose here:

• https://errors.haskell.org/messages/GHCup-00841/
• https://github.com/haskellfoundation/error-message-index/blob/main/message-index/messages/GHCup-00841/index.md