Cabal: statistics-0.13.3.0 fails to build its dependencies in a sandbox with GHC 7.4.2 or older

Created on 30 Aug 2016 · 16Comments · Source: haskell/cabal

I noticed recently that with cabal-install-1.24.0.0, certain packages mysteriously fail to build in a sandbox when using a sufficiently old version of GHC. I'm having trouble coming up with a minimal reproducible test case, but I've at least been able to trigger this bug when installing statistics-0.13.3.0 (which depends on aeson-1.0.0.0) in a sandbox. Here is what I did:

$ cabal get statistics-0.13.3.0
Unpacking to statistics-0.13.3.0/
$ cd statistics-0.13.3.0/
$ cabal sandbox init
Writing a default package environment file to
/home/rgscott/Documents/Hacking/Haskell/statistics-0.13.3.0/cabal.sandbox.config
Creating a new sandbox at
/home/rgscott/Documents/Hacking/Haskell/statistics-0.13.3.0/.cabal-sandbox
$ cabal install --only-dependencies -w /opt/ghc/7.4.2/bin/ghc --dry-run
Resolving dependencies...
In order, the following would be installed (use -v for more details):
abstract-par-0.3.3
base-compat-0.9.1
binary-0.8.2.1 (latest: 0.8.4.1)
bytestring-builder-0.10.8.1.0
cereal-0.4.1.1 (latest: 0.5.3.0)
dlist-0.8.0.1
erf-2.0.0.0
fail-4.9.0.0
parallel-3.2.1.0
random-1.1
abstract-deque-0.3
text-1.2.2.1
hashable-1.2.4.0
nats-1.1.1
time-locale-compat-0.1.1.3
transformers-0.5.2.0
mtl-2.2.1
monad-par-extras-0.3.3
primitive-0.6.1.0
transformers-compat-0.5.1.4
tagged-0.8.5
unordered-containers-0.2.7.1
semigroups-0.18.2
vector-0.11.0.0
mwc-random-0.13.4.0
monad-par-0.3.4.8
scientific-0.3.4.9
attoparsec-0.13.0.2
aeson-1.0.0.0
vector-algorithms-0.7.0.1
vector-binary-instances-0.2.3.2
vector-th-unbox-0.2.1.6
math-functions-0.2.0.1
$ cabal install --only-dependencies -w /opt/ghc/7.4.2/bin/ghc
Resolving dependencies...
Notice: installing into a sandbox located at
/home/rgscott/Documents/Hacking/Haskell/statistics-0.13.3.0/.cabal-sandbox
<lots of build output elided>
Configuring aeson-1.0.0.0...
Building aeson-1.0.0.0...
Failed to install aeson-1.0.0.0
Build log ( /home/rgscott/Documents/Hacking/Haskell/statistics-0.13.3.0/.cabal-sandbox/logs/aeson-1.0.0.0.log ):
cabal: Entering directory '/tmp/cabal-tmp-5011/aeson-1.0.0.0'
Configuring aeson-1.0.0.0...
Building aeson-1.0.0.0...
Preprocessing library aeson-1.0.0.0...
[ 1 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Types.Generic ( Data/Aeson/Types/Generic.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Types/Generic.o )
[ 2 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Internal.Functions ( Data/Aeson/Internal/Functions.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Internal/Functions.o )
[ 3 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Internal.Time ( Data/Aeson/Internal/Time.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Internal/Time.o )
[ 4 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Types.Internal ( Data/Aeson/Types/Internal.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Types/Internal.o )
[ 5 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Encoding.Builder ( Data/Aeson/Encoding/Builder.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Encoding/Builder.o )
[ 6 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Encoding.Internal ( Data/Aeson/Encoding/Internal.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Encoding/Internal.o )
[ 7 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Parser.Time ( Data/Aeson/Parser/Time.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Parser/Time.o )
[ 8 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Parser.Internal ( Data/Aeson/Parser/Internal.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Parser/Internal.o )
[ 9 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Parser ( Data/Aeson/Parser.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Parser.o )
[10 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Encoding ( Data/Aeson/Encoding.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Encoding.o )
[11 of 19] Compiling Data.Aeson.Types.ToJSON ( Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs, dist/dist-sandbox-23a31be8/build/Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.o )

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:658:32:
    Illegal operator `:*:' in type `a :*: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:668:49:
    Illegal operator `:*:' in type `a :*: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:671:32:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:672:32:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:673:32:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:680:55:
    Illegal operator `:.:' in type `f :.: g'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:720:36:
    Illegal operator `:*:' in type `a :*: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:726:36:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:727:36:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:728:36:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:736:63:
    Illegal operator `:.:' in type `f :.: g'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:829:42:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:869:40:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:908:56:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:923:40:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:946:40:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:1023:38:
    Illegal operator `:*:' in type `a :*: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:1054:41:
    Illegal operator `:*:' in type `a :*: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:1097:37:
    Illegal operator `:*:' in type `a :*: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:1118:38:
    Illegal operator `:*:' in type `a :*: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:1138:49:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:1161:49:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:1187:36:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types

Data/Aeson/Types/ToJSON.hs:1213:36:
    Illegal operator `:+:' in type `a :+: b'
      Use -XTypeOperators to allow operators in types
cabal: Leaving directory '/tmp/cabal-tmp-5011/aeson-1.0.0.0'
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
aeson-1.0.0.0 failed during the building phase. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1

Another package that triggers this problem is text-show, although that takes longer to build than aeson does.

This problem does not seem to occur with GHC 7.6.3 or later.

invalid bug

Source

RyanGlScott

Most helpful comment

Wow... I actually know exactly what this bug is about, as I stumbled over it myself a couple of weeks ago. @ezyang may remember I was banging my head debugging a really weird GHC 7.4 issue which turned out to be a bug in GHC 7.4's lexer with its handling of lexemes when placed near buffer-boundaries; this got fixed via ghc/ghc@c250f93bd38c7d8f6453dd79dd9951f9a02bf5a7

What made this bug so annoying it's highly dependent on how much whitespace is added by cpp (which changes depending on GCC version/Ubuntu version, _and_ also possibly pathnames ending up being inserted by cpp), and consequently whether the {- lexeme fell right on the buffer-boundary...

PS: this is easily workaroundable by a single-line patch to GHC 7.4.2's source-tree by increasing the initial buffer size to say 16k or so.

hvr on 6 Sep 2016

👍3

All 16 comments

Are you sure that this is a Cabal issue and not a problem with aeson code?

23Skidoo on 30 Aug 2016

@23Skidoo, it's definitely not an aeson issue, since I can build statistics-0.13.3.0 fine with GHC 7.4.2 outside of a sandbox. (And if you don't believe me, you can see that TypeOperators is enabled at the top of Data.Aeson.Types.JSON.

RyanGlScott on 30 Aug 2016

This is quite mysterious!

23Skidoo on 30 Aug 2016

I'm tentatively marking this as obsoleted by nix-local-build, but it's possible that the bug exists for new-build as well. Would be good to know.

ezyang on 30 Aug 2016

What would be really helpful is the -v output, which would show us the command line invocation of GHC (and preferably, compared with an invocation that does successfully compile.) That might give some hints as to what's going on.

ezyang on 31 Aug 2016

I tried to repro, but could not.

ezyang on 31 Aug 2016

Sorry, I'm aware that this is an imprecise example. I'll try to boil it down to a simpler example sometime later today (and get the -v/new-build results as well).

RyanGlScott on 31 Aug 2016

OK, I managed to boil this down to a simpler testcase. I've moved the code into https://github.com/RyanGlScott/cabal3739. You should be able to reproduce the above error by following these steps:

$ git clone https://github.com/RyanGlScott/cabal3739
$ cd cabal3739/
$ /opt/cabal/1.24/bin/cabal sandbox init
$ /opt/cabal/1.24/bin/cabal install -v3 -w /opt/ghc/7.4.2/bin/ghc

(This assumes you're using hvr's Ubuntu PPA to install cabal-install-1.24 and ghc-7.4.2.)

The -v3 output of building cabal3739 is located here: https://gist.github.com/RyanGlScott/0aebd356a764913d8f467c72528b7b13

RyanGlScott on 4 Sep 2016

Wow, this is a weird one. Doing _any_ of the following will make /opt/cabal/1.24/bin/cabal install -v3 /opt/ghc/7.4.2/bin/ghc work when in the cabal3739 directory:

Commenting out any of the unnecessary LANGUAGE pragmas in Data.Aeson.Types.ToJSON. Apparently, they're all needed to trigger this bug.
Commenting out any of the dependencies in cabal3739.cabal.
Adding new dependencies to cabal3739.cabal. Seriously. I tried adding a pretty dependency at the bottom, and it started working.

RyanGlScott on 4 Sep 2016

/opt/cabal/1.24/bin/cabal new-build -w /opt/ghc/7.4.2/bin/ghc works inside and outside of a sandbox.

RyanGlScott on 4 Sep 2016

@RyanGlScott This still does not reproduce for me, using ghc and cabal from @hvr's PPA. Are you sure this is not some corruption of your user package database? You can test this without blowing away your .cabal/.ghc directory by just setting HOME to somewhere else.

ezyang on 5 Sep 2016

I set my $HOME to somewhere else and was still able to reproduce the error on two different 64-bit Linux machines.

RyanGlScott on 5 Sep 2016

Would it be possible to get access to one of the boxes that is failing? I've run out of Ubuntu-running machines (and without hvr's PPA, it's too difficult to get a working 7.4 install.)

ezyang on 5 Sep 2016

PS: this is easily workaroundable by a single-line patch to GHC 7.4.2's source-tree by increasing the initial buffer size to say 16k or so.

hvr on 6 Sep 2016

👍3

@hvr Thanks! So this is not a Cabal or sandbox issue after all.

23Skidoo on 6 Sep 2016

@hvr to the rescue! Seriously, thanks for identifying the source of the issue—I felt like I was going insane for a while :)

That's kind of unfortunate that it's simply an obscure GHC 7.4 bug, but I suppose this gives me a reason to break out the new-build capabilities.

RyanGlScott on 6 Sep 2016

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