Why does GHC take so long to link?

Question

>cabal update
>cabal install cabal-install
.......
[43 of 44] Compiling Distribution.Client.Install ( Distribution/Client/Install.hs, dist/build/cabal/cabal-tm         


        

Answer 1

Very likely it's the linker itself. The standard ld from binutils is known to be slow. If you want to speed things up (and live a bit on the edge), try installing the Gold linker. On Ubuntu (and I assume Debian), that would be:

sudo apt-get install binutils-gold

I've been using it on my home system for a while now, no issues yet.