Static binary release for 0.7.1 possible?

[webframp]

Hi! 👋

I'm not very familiar with the current state of haskell builds with stack, but was curious if you think it's possible to get a static 64bit linux binary on the releases?

Or maybe you know pointers/current blockers for doing this myself? Thanks!

[duijf]

I think it can be done, but might be cumbersome if this blog post is anything to go by: https://vadosware.io/post/static-binaries-for-haskell-a-convoluted-approach/

I don't think there would be blockers specifically with vaultenv, but I might be really wrong about that.

What is your usecase for static binaries? If it's common enough, we can maybe help

[duijf]

(Just to be sure we're talking about the same thing: if you just want a binary, you can build one with the command stack build, the only thing that these link dynamically is libgmp and libc)

[webframp]

My reason for a static binary is using vaultenv in docker containers. For the smallest possible container I'd like to be able to create a layer using FROM scratch or at least alpine linux, instead of having the external lib dependencies and a larger base container image.

[duijf]

Alpine isn't officially supported by Stack yet commercialhaskell/stack#2387, but reportedly people have gotten this to work for GHC 8.0.2. Vaultenv uses GHC 8.2 through stack, but it still compiles successfully if you change the resolver to lts-9.20 in stack.yaml.

The foundation Haskell library builds against musl: haskell-foundation/foundation#393 so building Haskell on Alpine against musl can be done. Don't know about vaultenv, though, but it's worth a shot

Some instructions that I found on this:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/5lk33p/struggling_building_a_static_binary_for_aws/
• https://gist.github.com/erebe/9611b2c8f1d26cc91cc3fb33bbae0eb9

[webframp]

I'm still experimenting, here's another gist found during some research:

• https://gist.github.com/jkachmar/4828bfe0f585bec93878ea893c3373ee

[naushadh]

@webframp check out https://github.com/naushadh/hello-world

[webframp]

Thanks for the tip @naushadh

I experimented but the resolver is different between the hello-world example and vaultenv, no success yet but I'll keep at it as my time allows

[naushadh]

@webframp perhaps try bumping down the vaultenv resolver to match what's in hello-world (9.21)? @duijf already appears to have had success with resolver 9.2.

Once alpinelinux/aports#4255 gets merged, newer resolver should be possible in the alpine docker setup.

[ruuda]

I was able to build a static binary like so (based on this blog post):

$ cabal2nix --shell . > default.nix

Then insert the following lines:

  enableSharedExecutables = false;
  enableSharedLibraries = false;
  configureFlags = [
    "--ghc-option=-optl=-static"
    "--ghc-option=-optl=-pthread"
    "--ghc-option=-optl=-L${pkgs.gmp6.override { withStatic = true; }}/lib"
    "--ghc-option=-optl=-L${pkgs.zlib.static}/lib"
    "--ghc-option=-optl=-L${pkgs.glibc.static}/lib"
  ];

Remove the qualified Options.Applicative.Builder.Internal as OptParse import from src/Config.hs, it is unused and causes a -Werror failure. Then build the binary:

$ nix build
$ file result/bin/vaultenv
result/bin/vaultenv: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, stripped

[arianvp]

Statically linking libgmp I would advice against. It means you need to relicense vaultenv under the LGPL license.

However you could use 'integer-simple' instead of libgmp for Integers.

[ruuda]

Good point @arianvp.

[nh2]

Issue title:

Static binary release for 0.7.1 possible?

@webframp Do you mean 1.7.1?

[nh2]

@webframp Do you mean 1.7.1?

Ah sorry, you were talking about valutenv's version number, I thought you meant stack's.

[nh2]

I was able to build a static binary like so (based on this blog post):

@ruuda I tuned the idea of that blog post further, so that you can link fully statically with musl instead of glibc (glibc doesn't really support fully static linking):

https://github.com/nh2/static-haskell-nix

It can now build executables with many dependencies, such as stack (there's an example in the repo). You may be able to adapt this approach to build whatever you would like fully statically.