Editing GHC/FAQ (section)

== Porting GHC ==

=== How do I port GHC to platform X? ===

There are two distinct possibilities: either

* The hardware architecture for your system is already supported by GHC, but you're running an OS that isn't supported (or perhaps has been supported in the past, but currently isn't). This is the easiest type of porting job, but it still requires some careful bootstrapping.

* Your system's hardware architecture isn't supported by GHC. This will be a more difficult port (though by comparison perhaps not as difficult as porting gcc).

Both ways require you to bootstrap from intermediate HC files: these are the stylised C files generated by GHC when it compiles Haskell source. Basically the idea is to take the HC files for GHC itself to the target machine and compile them with gcc to get a working GHC, and go from there.

The [http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building Building Guide] has all the details on how to bootstrap GHC on a new platform.