The GHC builder

The GHC builder is a client/server system that allows us to build and test GHC on lots of different computers scattered around the world (the clients, or build slaves), and aggregate the test results centrally (the server).

Building the build slave

cd client/
cabal sandbox init
cabal sandbox add-source ../common/
cabal install --dependencies-only
cabal build

Controlling resource usage

It is recommended that you run the builder-client in a dedicated VM or container environment to control resources. However, in the absence of that you can use ulimit on UNIX and UNIX-like systems to control the maximum resources that builder-client will consume. Windows System Resource Manager can be used in a similar manner.

Example: Run builder-client with a 2GB virtual memory limit

ulimit -v 2000000
builder-client -v

See Also: https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Builder