Building ghc on Windows with msys2

Thu Oct 9 09:29:25 UTC 2014

I'll set up a wikipage this evening.

Should we get a mailing list of our own too, or do you think it's best to
continue on ghc-devs@?

-- 
Gintautas Miliauskas
On Oct 9, 2014 9:52 AM, "Simon Peyton Jones" <simonpj at microsoft.com> wrote:

>  I think I’m fairly behind on the current build process of GHC, but as I
> do use GHC mainly on Windows, at such a time as you would like to move on
> to other things, I would certainly throw my hat In the ring.
>
>
>
> That sounds helpful, thank you.
>
>
> Are we at the point where we could form a GHC-on-Windows Task Force?  With
> its own wiki page on the GHC Trac, and with named participants.  (Of course
> you can drop off again.)  But it would be really helpful to have an
> explicit group who feels a sense of ownership about making sure GHC works
> well on Windows.  At the moment we are reduced to folk memory “I recall
> that Gintautas did something like that a few months ago”.
>
>
> It sounds as if Tamar would be a willing member.  Would anyone else be
> willing?    I’d say that being a member indicates a positive willingness to
> help others, along with some level of expertise, NOT a promise to drop
> everything to attend to someone else’s problem.
>
>
>
> Simon
>
>
>
> *From:* lonetiger at gmail.com [mailto:lonetiger at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 09 October 2014 06:04
> *To:* Gintautas Miliauskas; Simon Peyton Jones
> *Cc:* Randy Polen; kyra; Marek Wawrzos; Roman Kuznetsov; Neil Mitchell;
> ghc-devs at haskell.org
> *Subject:* Re: Building ghc on Windows with msys2
>
>
>
> Hi Gintautas,
>
>
>
> >  Indeed, the next thing I was going to ask was about expediting the
> decision process. I would be happy to try and coordinate a push in Windows
> matters. There is a caveat though: I don't have any skin in the
> GHC-on-Windows game, so I will want to move on to other things afterwards.
>
>
>
> I think I’m fairly behind on the current build process of GHC, but as I do
> use GHC mainly on Windows, at such a time as you would like to move on to
> other things, I would certainly throw my hat In the ring.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tamar
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Gintautas Miliauskas <gintautas.miliauskas at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎October‎ ‎2‎, ‎2014 ‎22‎:‎32
> *To:* Simon Peyton Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com>
> *Cc:* Randy Polen <randyhaskell at outlook.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>, Neil Mitchell <ndmitchell at gmail.com>,
> ghc-devs at haskell.org
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> > 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?
>
>
>
> Indeed, the next thing I was going to ask was about expediting the
> decision process. I would be happy to try and coordinate a push in Windows
> matters. There is a caveat though: I don't have any skin in the
> GHC-on-Windows game, so I will want to move on to other things afterwards.
>
>
>
>  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?
>
>
>
> Sounds great. The question still remains about making changes to code: is
> there a particular person with commit rights that we could lean on for code
> reviews and committing changes to the main repository?
>
>
>
>  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.)
>
>
>
> Indeed, it's a bit of a mess. I intended to shape up the msys2 page to
> serve as the default, but wanted to see more testing done before before
> dropping the other pages.
>
>
>
>  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.
>
>
>
> Are you sure that is a problem? The page specifically instructs to use the
> msys64_shell.bat script (through a shortcut) that is included in msys2, and
> that script takes care of setting MSYSTEM=MINGW64, among other important
> things.
>
>
>
>  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.
>
>
>
> Makes sense. Just curious: why is this less of a problem on GNU/Linux
> distros compared to msys2? Does msys2 see comparatively less testing, or is
> it generally more bleeding edge?
>
>
>
> ·        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.
>
>  A "rubenvb" build is one of the available types of prebuilt binary
> packages of mingw for Windows. Let's figure out if there is something more
> mainstream and if we can migrate to that.
>
>
>
> --
> Gintautas Miliauskas
>
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