patch applied (cabal-install): Rewrite the bootstrap.sh script

[Thorkil Naur]

Hello Duncan,

On Thursday 15 January 2009 20:36, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 18:28 +0100, Thorkil Naur wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > On Thursday 15 January 2009 12:25, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> > > Thu Jan 15 02:22:10 PST 2009  Duncan Coutts <duncan at haskell.org>
> > >   * Rewrite the bootstrap.sh script
> > >   Hopefully more useful and more robust.
> > 
> > Yes, hopefully. A while back, I ran bootstrap.sh under Windows (with MSYS 
as I 
> > recall) and it sort of failed, I presume that the details are not 
> > interesting. I (think I) know, now, that you are not supposed to do that, 
> > that under Windows, you must install the dependencies individually.
> > 
> > Getting to the point here: I don't see a check on the environment 
anywhere, I 
> > am not sure how to do that, but you probably know. In any case, adding a 
> > check that produces an error message if you try to run this script under 
> > (MSYS or Cygwin) under Windows would seem valuable. Had such a check been 
in 
> > place at the time a while back that I refer to, I would have been spared 
some 
> > agony.
> 
> Patches to make the script work on windows or to detect it and fail
> gracefully would be gratefully accepted.

I would gladly work on that, but to make sure that I am not spending a lot of 
effort covering ground that has already been tread by others, could you tell 
me why the bootstrap.sh script is not being recommended for Windows (using 
MSYS and/or Cygwin)? On 
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/CabalInstall I read that 
bootstrap.sh is for "Quick Installation on Unix". I seem to recall that, 
somewhere in the vicinity of that, an explicit statement to the effect "On 
Windows, you have to install the dependencies (zlib, etc.) by hand, then 
cabal-intall itself, using the "good old" runhaskell [Ss]etup.{,l}hs 
{configure,build,install} method" were written. But now I cannot find it.

So, is this failure to recommend bootstrap.sh for Windows (using MSYS and/or 
Cygwin) simply a matter of not having the possibility of testing it? Or that 
it failed the first time somebody tried and there was no obvious explanation? 
Or is there, perhaps, some serious problem that needs to be solved to have 
any hope of making bootstrap.sh work under Windows (with MSYS and/or Cygwin)?

> ...

Thanks and best regards
Thorkil