Building ghc on Windows with msys2

[Gintautas Miliauskas]

I've cleaned up the main Windows build
<https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows> page,
moved MSYS2 instructions there, moved out legacy instructions and added
backlinks / warnings / redirects. It would be great if someone could go
through, verify the instructions and make sure there are no loose ends or
misleading wikipages.

On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 12:25 AM, Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com>
wrote:

>  Gintautas, and other folk building GHC on Windows,
>
>
>
> There has been some activity on the “GHC on Windows” front, which is
> great.
>
>
>
> Some time ago I wrote:
>
> I would love it if you guys formed a GHC-on-Windows Task Force, who tried
> to make sure that the Windows experience was always good.  At the moment we
> have lots of Windows users but very few who are willing to help make it
> work, the recipients of this email being honourable exceptions.
>
>
>
> but nothing really happened.  Maybe this time it can!  Possible member of
> such a task force are:
>
> ·        Gintautas Miliauskas gintautas.miliauskas at gmail.com
>
> ·        kyra kyrab at mail.ru
>
> ·        Marek Wawrzos marek.28.93 at gmail.com
>
> ·        Tamar Christina <lonetiger at gmail.com>
>
> ·        Roman Kuznetsov <kuznero at hotmail.com>
>
> ·        Randy Polen <randyhaskell at outlook.com>
>
>
>
> All we need is someone to act as convenor/coordinator and we are good to
> go.  Would any of you be willing to play that role?
>
>
>
> An advantage of having a working group is that you can *decide* things.
> At the moment people often wait for GHC HQ to make a decision, and end up
> waiting a long time.  It would be better if a working group was responsible
> for the GHC-on-Windows build and then if (say) you want to mandate msys2,
> you can go ahead and mandate it.  Well, obviously consult ghc-devs for
> advice, but you are in the lead.  Does that make sense?
>
>
>
>
>
> I think an early task is to replace what Neil Mitchell encountered: FIVE
> different wiki pages describing how to build GHC on Windows.  We want just
> one!  (Others can perhaps be marked “out of date/archive” rather than
> deleted, but it should be clear which is the main choice.)
>
>
>
> I agree with using msys2 as the main choice.  (I’m using it myself.)  It
> may be that Gintautas’s page
> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows/MSYS2
> is already sufficient.  Although I’d like to see it tested by others.  For
> example, I found that it was CRUCIAL to set MSYSYSTEM=MINGW whereas
> Gintautas’s page says nothing about that.
>
>
>
> Other small thoughts:
>
> ·        We started including the ghc-tarball stuff because when we
> relied directly on the gcc that came with msys, we kept getting build
> failures because the gcc that some random person happened to be using did
> not work (e..g. they had a too-old or too-new version of msys).  By using a
> single, fixed gcc, we avoided all this pain.
>
>
>
> ·        I don’t know what a “rubenvb” build is, but I think you can go
> ahead and say “use X and Y in this way”.  The important thing is that it
> should be reproducible, and not dependent on the particular Cygwin or gcc
> or whatever the that user happens to have installed.
>
>
>
> Simon
>
>
>
> *From:* ghc-devs [mailto:ghc-devs-bounces at haskell.org] *On Behalf Of *Gintautas
> Miliauskas
> *Sent:* 15 September 2014 21:58
> *To:* ghc-devs at haskell.org
> *Subject:* Building ghc on Windows with msys2
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
>
>
> I have been messing around a little bit with building GHC from source on
> Windows, and found the msys2 wikipage
> <https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows/MSYS2> quite
> useful, but somewhat outdated. Quite a few steps in those instructions are
> no longer necessary and can be omitted. I am working on cleaning up that
> wikipage right now and should be done in a day or two.
>
>
>
> I've found a recent email
> <http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/2014-September/006251.html> in
> the middle of updating the wikipage about other people planning to do the
> same, so I thought I'd shoot an email to make sure that work is not being
> duplicated.
>
>
>
> msys2 seems to be in good shape and should probably be promoted to the
> primary suggested method to build ghc on Windows. Let's look into that once
> the new build instructions have been proofread and verified.
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> --
> Gintautas Miliauskas
>



-- 
Gintautas Miliauskas
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