Question

I’m trying to build and install readline on a i386 MacBook with Snow Leopard.

I have made the following steps:

download and extract readline-6.0.tar.gz
./configure
make everything
sudo make install

I checked the examples and they appear to work (for instance rltest has support for history).
This is the output of
file libreadline.6.0.dylib :

libreadline.6.0.dylib: Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library x86_64

I expected it to be i386 instead, but then if the examples work…

then I have installed the readline package from cabal with the following:

cabal install readline --reinstall --configure-option=--with-readline-includes="/usr/local/include" --configure-option=--with-readline-libraries="/usr/local/lib"

It appears to work: note that without the configure-options installation fails. I have used the –reinstall flag to force reinstallation since I have already made many trials.

This is the output of cabal info:

$ cabal info readline
* readline         (library)
    Synopsis:      An interface to the GNU readline library
    Latest version available: 1.0.1.0
    Latest version installed: 1.0.1.0
    Homepage:      [ Not specified ]
    Bug reports:   [ Not specified ]
    Description:   More information on readline can be found at
                   http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/directory\/readline.html.
    License:       GPL
    Maintainer:    [e-mail]
    Source repo:   [ Not specified ]
    Flags:         split-base
    Dependencies:  base >=3, process -any, base <3
    Documentation: [ Not installed ]
    Cached:        Yes
    Modules:
        System.Console.Readline
        System.Console.SimpleLineEditor

Ok, it seems that I am done. No, I am not:

GHCi, version 6.10.4: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/  :? for help
Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done.
Loading package integer ... linking ... done.
Loading package base ... linking ... done.
Prelude> import System.Console.Readline
Prelude System.Console.Readline> do { readline "Prompt" }
Loading package syb ... linking ... done.
Loading package base-3.0.3.1 ... linking ... done.
Loading package filepath-1.1.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package old-locale-1.0.0.1 ... linking ... done.
Loading package old-time-1.0.0.2 ... linking ... done.
Loading package unix-2.3.2.0 ... linking ... done.
Loading package directory-1.0.0.3 ... linking ... done.
Loading package process-1.0.1.1 ... linking ... done.
Loading package readline-1.0.1.0 ... linking ... <interactive>: 
/Users/macbook/.cabal/lib/readline-1.0.1.0/ghc-6.10.4/HSreadline-1.0.1.0.o: unknown symbol `_rl_basic_quote_characters'
ghc: unable to load package `readline-1.0.1.0'

Unsuprisingly, I am also unable to build packages which depend on readline (eg JHC).

Can you point me in the right direction? Tell me if you need other info.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I have found the following procedure which has worked very well for me. I hope it can serve for future reference.

As I suspected, I wasn’t correctly compiling readline. The giveaway for this was

1. file explicity told me that the library was 64 bit
2. as per rtperson advice, compiling a test example was illuminating: linking was failing for that.

Look at the output:

ghc --make test_readline.hs 
Linking test_readline ...
ld: warning: in /usr/local/lib/libreadline.dylib, file is not of required architecture

So I set up to compile readline with the correct architecture, it was not guessing correctly. I simply cleaned the build dirs (make distclean), then configured passing the flag -m32 to gcc:

./configure CC="gcc -m32"

and then rebuilt everything (make everything) and installed it (sudo make install).
Now the filetype is encouraging:

~ 628 $ file /usr/local/lib/libreadline.dylib 
/usr/local/lib/libreadline.dylib: Mach-O dynamically linked shared library i386

and readline is working, at last.

PS: you can also build the readline-1.0.1.0 package by hand, as detailed on the “Configuring cabal install readline on Snow Leopard with MacPorts” thread in the haskell-cafe mailing list on 29 dec 2009.