Building on windows

[Niklas Larsson]

Here is a patch for this bug. It just adds 'msys' to the $OSNAME check.

Niklas


2013/8/23 Niklas Larsson <metaniklas at gmail.com>

> Hi!
>
> The check for Windows in sync-all is failing (line 790). On a mingw/msys
> system $OSNAME contains 'msys' and not MSWin32 or Cygwin that it is
> checking for.
>
> Niklas
>
>
> 2013/8/23 Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com>
>
>>  I’ve got a new Windows laptop, and have being having a torrid time
>> getting GHC to build on it.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> **1.      **Build falls over with ****
>>
>> checking for gcc... c:/code/HEAD/inplace/mingw/bin/gcc.exe****
>>
>> checking whether the C compiler works... no****
>>
>> configure: error: in `/c/code/HEAD':****
>>
>> configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables****
>>
>> Turns out that an earlier error was****
>>
>> configure: Making in-tree mingw tree****
>>
>> tar (child): ../../ghc-tarballs/mingw/binutils*.tar.lzma: Cannot open: No
>> such file or directory****
>>
>> tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now****
>>
>> tar: Child returned status 2****
>>
>> tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now****
>>
>> ./configure: line 4050: inplace/mingw/bin/realgcc.exe: No such file or
>> directory****
>>
>> configure: In-tree mingw tree created****
>>
>> configure: Making in-tree perl tree****
>>
>> BUT this error was not fatal, so the build went on (notwithstanding the
>> red message above), leading to a MUCH more obscure error later.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> **2.      **Why wasn’t ghc-tarballs there?  Oh, apparently you have to
>> say ****
>>
>> sync-all –windows get****
>>
>> That’s really hard for a naïve user to work out.  Can’t we either always
>> get it, or work out that we are on windows?****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> **3.      **I carefully installed mingw/msys as described on
>> http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started
>> I used mingw-set-inst, which launches a GUI for a package installer.  All
>> seems well.  I update my path.  But then****
>>
>> Can't locate Autom4te/ChannelDefs.pm in @INC (@INC contains:
>> /mingw/share/autoco****
>>
>> nf /usr/lib/perl5/5.8/msys /usr/lib/perl5/5.8
>> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8/msys****
>>
>> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8
>> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_****
>>
>> perl/5.8/msys /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8
>> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8 .) a****
>>
>> t /c/Programme/MinGW/bin/autoreconf-2.68 line 40.****
>>
>> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at
>> /c/Programme/MinGW/bin/autoreconf-2.68 line****
>>
>>   40.****
>>
>> After a long struggle I found that I had missed a crucial thing.  With
>> the new autoconf tools, *it’s essential that c:/mingw be mounted as
>> /mingw*, because /mingw is hard-coded into autoconf perl scripts.
>> http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started does say (deep in the middle)
>> to edit c:/mingw/msys/1.0/etc/fstab with a text editor, but that appeared
>> to have no effect for me.  Saying “mount c:/mingw /mingw” did work.  I
>> have no idea why. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> What is horrible is how uninformative the error message is.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I guess we should update the Windows build instructions.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I still don’t know if I’ve bottomed out here because I can’t find
>> Happy/Alex in the Haskell platform. Sigh.****
>>
>> Simon****
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ghc-devs mailing list
>> ghc-devs at haskell.org
>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/attachments/20130823/0fdeecac/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 0001-OSNAME-is-msys-when-using-MSYS-to-build-on-Windows.patch
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 619 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/attachments/20130823/0fdeecac/attachment.obj>