65 lines
		
	
	
		
			2.0 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			Markdown
		
	
	
	
	
	
		
		
			
		
	
	
			65 lines
		
	
	
		
			2.0 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			Markdown
		
	
	
	
	
	
|   | --- | ||
|  | layout: post | ||
|  | title: "Elm on FreeBSD" | ||
|  | date: 2019-05-11 | ||
|  | comments: true | ||
|  | tags: freebsd, elm, linux | ||
|  | --- | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | [Elm](https://elm-lang.org/) is a purely functional, strongly typed language for | ||
|  | building web-apps. I recently started playing with elm[^1] and so far love it! | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | There was a small bit of trouble though, Elm doesnt officially support | ||
|  | FreeBSD. The compiler is written in Haskell and | ||
|  | [couple](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/running-elm-on-freebsd/1613) | ||
|  | of | ||
|  | [people](https://gist.github.com/vyuh/ff05a20cb0f408e1fd0ac8c23d06025b) | ||
|  | have made it work on freebsd by compiling from source. | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | That's where I started, and soon gave up because compiling `elm 0.19` | ||
|  | needs `ghc-8.2.2`. That particular ghc version is no longer in binary | ||
|  | packages. Stack ghcs seems to be still [broken on | ||
|  | FreeBSD](https://blog.dbalan.in/blog/2019/01/08/recurse-center-day-%23-2/index.html) | ||
|  | to try that route. All of the solutions I encountered builds ghc from | ||
|  | source and that was going take an eternity on my thinkpad. | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | Luckily elm project provides binaries for Linux - and FreeBSD | ||
|  | [can pretend to be | ||
|  | linux](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/linuxemu.html) pretty | ||
|  | well. Thats what I ended up doing! | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | 1. Load the kernel module for linux emulation. | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | ``` | ||
|  | kldload linux64.ko | ||
|  | ``` | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | 2. Get elm [linux binary from github](https://github.com/elm/compiler/releases). | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | ``` | ||
|  | wget \ | ||
|  |  https://github.com/elm/compiler/releases/download/0.19.0/binaries-for-linux.tar.gz | ||
|  | tar xf binaries-for-linux.tar.gz | ||
|  | ``` | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | 3. Then [brand the ELF | ||
|  |    binary](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=brandelf&sektion=1&manpath=freebsd-release-ports) | ||
|  |    as type `Linux`. Kernel uses this information check decide runtime | ||
|  |    to use, in our case Linux emulation. | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | ``` | ||
|  | brandelf -t Linux ./elm | ||
|  | ``` | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | ..and there we have it | ||
|  | ``` | ||
|  | $ file elm | ||
|  | elm: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, with debug_info, not stripped | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | $ ./elm | ||
|  | Hi, thank you for trying out Elm 0.19.0. I hope you like it! | ||
|  | ... | ||
|  | ``` | ||
|  | 
 | ||
|  | [^1]: Shout-out to Tenor and Liz for introducing me to Elm. |