You've been rash enough to want to build some of the Glasgow Functional Programming tools (GHC, Happy, nofib, etc) from source. You've slurped the source, from the CVS repository or from a source distribution, and now you're sitting looking at a huge mound of bits, wondering what to do next.
Gingerly, you type `make all'. Wrong already!
This rest of this guide is intended for duffers like me, who aren't really interested in Makefiles and systems configurations, but who need a mental model of the interlocking pieces so that they can make them work, extend them consistently when adding new software, and lay hands on them gently when they don't work.