GHC panic on fresh Yesod framework

Question

I'm trying to start going through the book / tutorial for Yesod, but I've hit a problem relatively early. I'm able to successfully install yesod-platform and yesod-bin, but whenever I create a framework using yesod init with a SQL database (tried with both postgres and SQLite), I receive the following error when cabal install-ing said framework.

Loading package persistent-sqlite-1.2.1 ... ghc.exe: 
Unknown PEi386 section name `.drectve' (while processing: 
C:\SSol\yesod\one\.cabal-sandbox\i386-windows-ghc-7.6.3\
persistent-sqlite-1.2.1\libHSpersistent-sqlite-1.2.1.a) ghc.exe: 
panic! (the 'impossible' happened)  
(GHC version 7.6.3 for i386-unknown-mingw32):         loadArchive
"C:\\SSol\\yesod\\one\\.cabal-sandbox\\i386-windows-ghc-7.6.3\\
persistent-sqlite-1.2.1\\libHSpersistent-sqlite-1.2.1.a": failed

A similar error occurs when using a different SQL database, with the applicable persistent package.

However, when building a framework with no database, it installs without a hitch.

I'm using cabal-install native sandboxing on cabal-install version 1.18.03 (though I had the same issue with 1.18.02). I've tried a few fresh installs, and with a clean package cache, all with the same result.

Thanks in advance!

This may not at all be relevant, but I've had similar kinds of bugs with lots of different packages on my Linux system since using cabal-install 1.18. One thing that worked for me was (1) deleting the entirety of my ~/.ghc folder and (2) reverting to cabal-install 1.16. — Michael Snoyman
I'm actually now running into an error running yesod devel on the no-DB framework. GHC crashes and devel throws the error: Exit code: ExitFailure (-1073741819) I've no idea if they're related. If you think it's worthwhile, I guess I'll try starting over in a totally fresh environment. I'll probably just build a VM; do you recommend linux over win specifically? If so, is any flavor more supported than another? Thanks, both for your answer now, and for all your work on Yesod. — berman.josh
I personally develop on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, so that's probably the most well tested combination. That's also what the FP Complete servers run on, so there's a lot of testing there as well. Things should work fine on Windows in general (I just did a build there yesterday), but there's obviously some kind of a bug here. I'd probably still recommend trying to wipe out your package database and trying again before resorting to a VM. — Michael Snoyman
I had wiped out the package database as one of my troubleshooting steps before posting; sorry, I thought I had mentioned that in my original post. I just tried installing on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, but got caught up very quickly in cabal hell (conflict in warp). (As an aside, the instructions in 1.2.2.1 after you "lay the foundation" assume you have cabal 1.18 installed; they include "cabal sandbox init"). I guess I'll go back to trying to get it to work with sandboxes. Thanks. — berman.josh

Yuras Yuras · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-10T17:04:34

Seems to be an instance of this bug in ghc. It should be fixed in HEAD.

How did you install ghc? AFAIK prebuilt package contains known-to-work gcc version. Did you compiled ghc from sources? If yes, then try the prebuilt package.

GHC panic on fresh Yesod framework

2 Answers