# Installation information
If you are having difficulty installing the PureScript compiler, feel free to
ask for help! A good place is the #purescript IRC channel on Freenode, or
alternatively Stack Overflow.
## Using prebuilt binaries
The prebuilt binaries are compiled with GHC 8.0.2 and therefore they should
run on any operating system supported by GHC 8.0.2, such as:
* Windows Vista or later,
* OS X 10.7 or later,
* Linux ??? (we're not sure what the minimum version is).
This list is not exhaustive. If your OS is too old or not listed, or if the
binaries fail to run, you may be able to install the compiler by building it
from source; see below.
Other prebuilt distributions (eg, Homebrew, AUR, npm) will probably have the
same requirements.
## Compiling from source
The easiest way is to use stack:
```
$ stack update
$ stack unpack purescript
$ cd purescript-x.y.z # (replace x.y.z with whichever version you just downloaded)
$ stack install --flag purescript:RELEASE
```
This will then copy the compiler and utilities into `~/.local/bin`.
If you don't have stack installed, there are install instructions
[here](https://github.com/commercialhaskell/stack/blob/master/doc/install_and_upgrade.md).
If you don't have GHC installed, stack will prompt you to run `stack setup`
which will install the correct version of GHC for you.
## The "curses" library
The PureScript REPL depends on the `curses` library (via the Haskell package
`terminfo`). If you are having difficulty running the compiler, it may be
because the `curses` library is missing.
On Linux, you will probably need to install `ncurses` manually. On Ubuntu, for
example, this can be done by running:
```
$ sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev
```