GHC musl

March 25, 2026 · View on GitHub

Unofficial and untested binary distributions of GHC on Alpine Linux.

The multi‑arch (linux/amd64, linux/arm64/v8) docker image used to build the statically linked Linux amd64 and arm64 binary releases of

Credit to

@odidev for ghc-bootstrap-aarch64¹
and
@neosimsim for neosimsim—Docker build images

who laid the groundwork for this.

Credit to

Celeste of Alpine for GHC bootstrap riscv64²

who made it possible to add linux/riscv64 images (GHC versions ≥ 9.10.1).

GHC musl

Prerequisites

This project requires an installation of docker.

Install

To install docker, follow the instructions for your platform:

Usage

Build image

latest:

docker build \
  -t ghc-musl \
  -f dockerfiles/9.14.1.Dockerfile .

version:

docker build \
  -t ghc-musl:MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH \
  -f dockerfiles/MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.Dockerfile .

For MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH GHC versions 8.8.4, 8.10.1 and ≥ 8.10.4.

:point_right: See the Version Matrix for detailed information.

Run container

self built:

docker run --rm -ti ghc-musl:{latest,MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH}

from Quay:

docker run --rm -ti quay.io/benz0li/ghc-musl:{latest,MAJOR[.MINOR[.PATCH]]}[-int-native]

from Docker Hub:

docker run --rm -ti docker.io/benz0li/ghc-musl:{latest,MAJOR[.MINOR[.PATCH]]}[-int-native]

from GitLab (b-data GmbH):

docker run --rm -ti glcr.b-data.ch/ghc/ghc-musl:{latest,MAJOR[.MINOR[.PATCH]]}[-int-native]

As of 2023‑08‑12, the images (versions 9.2.8, 9.4.6, 9.6.2 and later) also include the Haskell Tool Stack (Stack).

On 2024‑02‑23, the binary distribution of GHC version 9.8.2 was released for Alpine Linux (AArch64).
:exclamation: Use flags --no-install-ghc --system-ghc with Stack (GHC versions < 9.8.2) to ensure that only the GHC available in the container is used.

GMP licensing restrictions

The regular images produce binaries linked against the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library (GMP), which is used by default by the integer-gmp library to provide a big-integer implementation for Haskell.

Unlike most Haskell code, which is licensed under the permissive BSD3 license, the GMP library is licensed under LGPL. This means resulting statically linked binaries must be provided with source code or object files.

If that is not acceptable for your situation, use images with the int-native subtag. These images provide a GHC that links against the Haskell-native big-integer backend and produces statically linked binaries that are not subject to GMP's licensing restrictions.
:information_source: Available for versions 9.6.7, 9.8.4, 9.10.1, 9.12.2 and later.

The current Dev Containers of this project use images with the int-native subtag.

Default linker

For GHC versions 9.10.2, 9.12.2 and later, the images with the int-native subtag use ld.lld (the LLVM linker) by default.

All other images use ld.bfd (the GNU linker) by default.

Dev Containers

The default Dev Container is meant to work on this repository.

The other configurations are custom GHC containers based on GHC musl images (int-native subtag).

For further information, see Dev Containers.

Similar projects

What makes this project different:

Multi‑arch: linux/amd64, linux/arm64/v8
Built using Hadrian³, from source, without docs
Built using the LLVM backend. Flavours:
- regular images: perf+split_sections+llvm
- int-native subtag: perf+split_sections+llvm+native_bignum

Interesting to read:

Opinion piece on GHC backends by @AndreasPK
Improving Haskell’s big numbers support by @hsyl20
lsupg Static Builds With GHC 9 by @TravisCardwell
- especially Part 2 and Part 3

Contributing

PRs accepted. Please submit to the GitLab repository.

This project follows the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct.

License

Distributed under the terms of the MIT License.

Porting GHC to Linux/AArch64 ↩
Porting GHC to Linux/RISC-V (64-bit) ↩
GHC versions ≥ 9.2.8. ↩