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-rw-r--r--INSTALL.md40
-rw-r--r--ghc.mk4
2 files changed, 42 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/INSTALL.md b/INSTALL.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..1db2595736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/INSTALL.md
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+Building & Installing
+=====================
+
+For full information on building GHC, see the GHC Building Guide [1].
+Here follows a summary - if you get into trouble, the Building Guide
+has all the answers.
+
+Before building GHC you may need to install some other tools and
+libraries. See "Setting up your system for building GHC" [2].
+
+NB. in particular you need GHC installed in order to build GHC,
+because the compiler is itself written in Haskell. For instructions
+on how to port GHC to a new platform, see the Building Guide [1].
+
+For building library documentation, you'll need Haddock [3]. To build
+the compiler documentation, you need a good DocBook XML toolchain and
+dblatex.
+
+Quick start: the following gives you a default build:
+
+ $ perl boot
+ $ ./configure
+ $ make
+ $ make install
+
+The "perl boot" step is only necessary if this is a tree checked out
+from git. For source distributions downloaded from GHC's web site,
+this step has already been performed.
+
+These steps give you the default build, which includes everything
+optimised and built in various ways (eg. profiling libs are built).
+It can take a long time. To customise the build, see the file
+`HACKING.md`.
+
+References
+==========
+
+ [1] http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
+ [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation
+ [3] http://www.haskell.org/haddock/
diff --git a/ghc.mk b/ghc.mk
index 0322ba6b47..08dcf198ec 100644
--- a/ghc.mk
+++ b/ghc.mk
@@ -1108,8 +1108,8 @@ SRC_DIST_GHC_DIRS = mk rules docs distrib bindisttest libffi includes \
utils docs rts compiler ghc driver libraries libffi-tarballs
SRC_DIST_GHC_FILES += \
configure.ac config.guess config.sub configure \
- aclocal.m4 README ANNOUNCE HACKING LICENSE Makefile install-sh \
- settings.in VERSION GIT_COMMIT_ID \
+ aclocal.m4 README.md ANNOUNCE HACKING.md INSTALL.md LICENSE Makefile
+ install-sh settings.in VERSION GIT_COMMIT_ID \
boot packages ghc.mk
.PHONY: VERSION