4.4. Help and verbosity options

--help, -?

Cause GHC to spew a long usage message to standard output and then exit.

-v

The -v option makes GHC verbose: it reports its version number and shows (on stderr) exactly how it invokes each phase of the compilation system. Moreover, it passes the -v flag to most phases; each reports its version number (and possibly some other information).

Please, oh please, use the -v option when reporting bugs! Knowing that you ran the right bits in the right order is always the first thing we want to verify.

-vn

To provide more control over the compiler's verbosity, the -v flag takes an optional numeric argument. Specifying -v on its own is equivalent to -v3, and the other levels have the following meanings:

-v0

Disable all non-essential messages (this is the default).

-v1

Minimal verbosity: print one line per compilation (this is the default when --make or --interactive is on).

-v2

Print the name of each compilation phase as it is executed. (equivalent to -dshow-passes).

-v3

The same as -v2, except that in addition the full command line (if appropriate) for each compilation phase is also printed.

-v4

The same as -v3 except that the intermediate program representation after each compilation phase is also printed (excluding preprocessed and C/assembly files).

--version

Print a one-line string including GHC's version number.

--numeric-version

Print GHC's numeric version number only.