GHC on Win32 strangeness

[Mike Thomas]

> Bryn <brk@jenkon.com> is trying to compile C->Haskell with
> GHC on Win32, but ran into some problems.  Firstly,
> configure says,
>
>   $ ./configure
>   loading cache ./config.cache
>   checking host system type... i686-pc-cygwin
>   checking target system type... i686-pc-cygwin
>   checking build system type... i686-pc-cygwin
>   checking for Cygwin environment... (cached) no
>   checking for gcc... (cached) gcc
>   [..]

Don't know about this one, sorry.  Maybe playing with
the --build/--host/--target parameters might help:

./configure --help

should give you some information.


>
> So, it says no Cygwin, but identifies the system as
> i686-pc-cygwin.  AFAIK, GHC uses mingw32 these days, doesn't
> it?  How can this be reliably tested for?  (To exclude
> -package posix on that platform.)
>
> Secondly, are there any issues with symlinks?  I append a
> sequence of commands that seems to indicate that GHC doesn't
> find a file, because it is symlinked.

GHC doesn't know about Cygwin symbolic links.  One way to deal with this is
to hand patch configure to use "cp" instad of "ln -s" wherever needed.

Another way might be to use the mingw32 MSYS environment, which is a Cygwin
branch hosting Mingw32 tools in a Posix setting, so that configure works
a-la Cygwin, but the output executables are normal Mingw32 programs - ie,
they know nothing about Cygwinisms.  Certain other gotcha's associated with
Mingw32 under Cygwin are also removed.

They are currently focused on the symlink problem.