That's an interesting point. I've never tried to build it directly from source. I'm not sure if this actually addresses what you want to do, but maybe you could start with the prebuilt binaries and then do `stack upgrade`, which will fetch and build the latest release from source?
I will say that I won't touch the Haskell platform with a 10 foot pole. I had nothing but issues with it in the past and it drove me away from using Haskell for years prior to finding stack.
> start with the prebuilt binaries and then do `stack upgrade`
Thanks but in this case I could also download the newest binaries instantly. The point is that I don't want to be dependent on any binaries. Compilation from scratch doesn't work.
Btw Rust has the same problem - it also depends on binary upgrades. Nim (nim-lang.org) proves how easy self-hosting can be - which also means how easy porting to other platforms can be.
Haskell is a really nice language, and I admire the work of the developers who provide GHC for free, but installation from source is really immature and painful, at least on Linux. If the Haskell platform were just self-hosting ...