Deploying Yesod to Heroku, can't build statically

Question

I'm very new to Yesod and I'm having trouble building Yesod statically so I can deploy to Heroku.

I have changed the default .cabal file to reflect static compilation

if flag(production)
   cpp-options:   -DPRODUCTION
   ghc-options:   -Wall -threaded -O2 -static -optl-static
else
   ghc-options:   -Wall -threaded -O0

And it no longer builds. I get a whole bunch of warnings and then a slew of undefined references like this:

Linking dist/build/personal-website/personal-website ...
/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/libHSrts_thr.a(Linker.thr_o): In function
`internal_dlopen':
Linker.c:(.text+0x407): warning: Using 'dlopen' in statically linked
applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc
version used for linking
/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/unix-2.4.2.0/libHSunix-2.4.2.0.a(HsUnix.o): In
function `__hsunix_getpwent':
HsUnix.c:(.text+0xa1): warning: Using 'getpwent' in statically linked
applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc
version used for linking
/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/unix-2.4.2.0/libHSunix-2.4.2.0.a(HsUnix.o): In
function `__hsunix_getpwnam_r':
HsUnix.c:(.text+0xb1): warning: Using 'getpwnam_r' in statically
linked applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the
glibc version used for linking
/usr/lib/libpq.a(thread.o): In function `pqGetpwuid':
(.text+0x15): warning: Using 'getpwuid_r' in statically linked
applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc
version used for linking
/usr/lib/libpq.a(ip.o): In function `pg_getaddrinfo_all':
(.text+0x31): warning: Using 'getaddrinfo' in statically linked
applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc
version used for linking
/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/site-local/network-2.3.0.2/
libHSnetwork-2.3.0.2.a(BSD__63.o): In function `sD3z_info':
(.text+0xe4): warning: Using 'gethostbyname' in statically linked
applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc
version used for linking
/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/site-local/network-2.3.0.2/
libHSnetwork-2.3.0.2.a(BSD__164.o): In function `sFKc_info':
(.text+0x12d): warning: Using 'getprotobyname' in statically linked
applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc
version used for linking
/usr/lib/ghc-7.0.3/site-local/network-2.3.0.2/
libHSnetwork-2.3.0.2.a(BSD__155.o): In function `sFDs_info':
(.text+0x4c): warning: Using 'getservbyname' in statically linked
applications requires at runtime the shared libraries from the glibc
version used for linking
/usr/lib/libpq.a(fe-misc.o): In function `pqSocketCheck':
(.text+0xa2d): undefined reference to `SSL_pending'
/usr/lib/libpq.a(fe-secure.o): In function `SSLerrmessage':
(.text+0x31): undefined reference to `ERR_get_error'
/usr/lib/libpq.a(fe-secure.o): In function `SSLerrmessage':
(.text+0x41): undefined reference to `ERR_reason_error_string'
/usr/lib/libpq.a(fe-secure.o): In function `initialize_SSL':
(.text+0x2f8): undefined reference to `SSL_check_private_key'
/usr/lib/libpq.a(fe-secure.o): In function `initialize_SSL':
(.text+0x3c0): undefined reference to `SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations'
(... snip ...)

If I just compile with just -static and without -optl-static everything builds fine but the application crashes when it tries to start on Heroku.

2011-12-28T01:20:51+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Starting process with command
`./dist/build/personal-website/personal-website -p 41083`
2011-12-28T01:20:51+00:00 app[web.1]: ./dist/build/personal-website/
personal-website: error while loading shared libraries: libgmp.so.10:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
2011-12-28T01:20:52+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting
to crashed

I tried adding libgmp.so.10 to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH as suggested in here and then got the following error:

2011-12-28T01:31:23+00:00 app[web.1]: ./dist/build/personal-website/
personal-website: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.14' not found
(required by ./dist/build/personal-website/personal-website)
2011-12-28T01:31:23+00:00 app[web.1]: ./dist/build/personal-website/
personal-website: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.14' not found
(required by /app/dist/build/personal-website/libgmp.so.10)
2011-12-28T01:31:25+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting
to crashed
2011-12-28T01:31:25+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Process exited

It seems that the version of libc that I'm compiling against is different. I tried also adding libc to the batch of libraries the same way I did for libgmp but this results in a segmentation fault when the application starts on the Heroku side.

Everything works fine on my PC. I'm running 64bit archlinux with ghc 7.0.3. The blog post on the official Yesod blog looked pretty easy but I'm stumped at this point. Anyone have any ideas? If there's a way to get this thing working without building statically I'm open to that too.

EDIT

Per Employed Russians answer I did the following to fix this.

First created a new directory lib under the project directory and copied the missing shared libraries into it. You can get this information by running ldd path/to/executable and heroku run ldd path/to/executable and comparing the output.

I then did heroku config:add LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./lib so when the application is started the dynamic linker will look for libraries in the new lib directory.

Finally I created an ubuntu 11.10 virtual machine and built and deployed to Heroku from there, this has an old enough glibc that it works on the Heroku host.

Edit: I've since written a tutorial on the Yesod wiki

Answer 1

I have no idea what Yesod is, but I know exactly what each of your other errors means.

First, you should not try to link statically. The warning you get is exactly right: if you link statically, and use one of the routines for which you are getting the warning, then you must arrange to run on a system with exactly the same version of libc.so.6 as the one you used at build time.

Contrary to popular belief, static linking produces less, not more, portable executables on Linux.

Your other (static) link errors are caused by missing libopenssl.a at link time.

But let's assume that you are going to go the "sane" route, and use dynamic linking.

For dynamic linking, Linux (and most other UNIXes) support backward compatibility: an old binary continues to work on newer systems. But they don't support forward compatibility (a binary built on a newer system will generally not run on an older one).

But that's what you are trying to do: you built on a system with glibc-2.14 (or newer), and you are running on a system with glibc-2.13 (or older).

The other thing you need to know is that glibc is composed of some 200+ binaries that must all match exactly. Two key binaries are /lib/ld-linux.so and /lib/libc.so.6 (but there are many more: libpthread.so.0, libnsl.so.1, etc. etc). If some of these binaries came from different versions of glibc, you usually get a crash. And that is exactly what you got, when you tried to place your glibc-2.14 libc.so.6 on the LD_LIBRARY_PATH -- it no longer matches the system /lib/ld-linux.

So what are the solutions? There are several possibilities (in increasing difficulty):

1. You could copy ld-2.14.so (the target of /lib/ld-linux symlink) to the target system, and invoke it explicitly:

   /path/to/ld-2.14.so --library-path <whatever> /path/to/your/executable
   

   This generally works, but can confuse an application that looks at argv[0], and breaks for applications that re-exec themselves.

2. You could build on an older system.

3. You could use appgcc (this option has disappeared, see this for description of what it used to be).

4. You could set up a chroot environment matching the target system, and build inside that chroot.

5. You could build yourself a Linux-to-olderLinux crosscompiler