On Debian 11, stack build fails with Prelude.chr: bad argument error

[yusi1]

General summary/comments (optional)

With the ghc version that stack installs, I get an error when trying to compile and install a project using stack install, this is the error:

Prelude.chr: bad argument: 3959423081

This is weird because if I were to use ghcup to install stack and ghc, and also enable ghcup's stack integration (mentioned here: https://www.haskell.org/ghcup/guide/#stack-integration) this error doesn't occur.

Steps to reproduce

For example:

1. Clone this project for example: https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad
2. Run stack init in the directory that you cloned the project into.
3. Run stack install, you might be met with the error above if you use stack to install ghc and not ghcup.

Expected

The project compiles and installs successfully.

Actual

What actually happened.

stack install
Prelude.chr: bad argument: 3959423081

Stack version

stack --version
Version 2.9.3, Git revision 6cf638947a863f49857f9cfbf72a38a48b183e7e x86_64 hpack-0.35.1

Method of installation

• Via the distro package for stack in Debian 11

Platform

x86-64, Debian 11

[mpilgrem]

@yusi1, thanks for reporting. Unfortunately, I am on Windows and cannot follow your xmonad example (because it depends on package unix). It is all packages, or is it xmonad in particular? For example, do you get it with a plain vanilla stack new foo project?

[yusi1]

@yusi1, thanks for reporting. Unfortunately, I am on Windows and cannot follow your xmonad example (because it depends on package unix). It is all packages, or is it xmonad in particular? For example, do you get it with a plain vanilla stack new foo project?

Hi mpilgrem, I don't know because I've only tried to compile and install the xmonad project, and not any other one, currently I cannot test whether it occurs with a different project since I have switched to using ghcup to install ghc and stack and as mentioned above the error does not occur when using ghcup to install ghc and stack.

Is it possible for you to start a Linux VM?

[mpilgrem]

@yusi1, as Linux is popular with Haskell users, Debian 11 (bullseye)/x86-64 is a popular Linux distribution, and you are the first to report this, I suspect it is something specific to your setup. I have tried to reproduce this on macOS 13.1/Apple silicon and Ubuntu 22.04/x86-64 (the only Unix-like OSs that I have access to myself). The xmonad repository includes a stack.yaml file, so I did not need the stack init step. stack build worked fine (ending in the configure phase, as my system does not have X11 libraries). I'll leave this issue open, to see if any other Debian users have anything to contribute.

[hasufell]

This is likely an issue with bindists and ghcup and stack pick different ones.

[mpilgrem]

Following up on @hasufell's observation: Currently, the xmonad/xmonad repository includes a stack.yaml that specifies Stackage LTS Haskell snapshot lts-20.16 (GHC 9.2.7). GHCUp, I think, fetches https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/9.2.7/ghc-9.2.7-x86_64-deb10-linux.tar.xz for Debian 11/x86-64. Stack, I suspect, has fetched https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/9.2.7/ghc-9.2.7-x86_64-fedora27-linux.tar.xz. However, I would not expect the 'Fedora 27' flavour of GHC 9.2.7 to be causing grief on Debian 11.

[hasufell]

https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/21600

https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/21235

You need to delete the xmonad.hi file, then things should work.