ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.8.2

[Felix Martini]

On Dec 16, 2007 2:21 AM, Yitzchak Gale wrote:

> The current behavior is not more WIndows native - it is
> arguably much worse. The %HOMEPATH% variable
> should definitely not be used. The folder that it points
> to is not a "home directory" and should not be used
> that way.

That's not correct. It is the user's home folder aka user profile
folder, see e.g. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/101507. The
environment variables %homedrive% and %homepath% are set by Windows
for use by (legacy) scripts. Think of them as readonly variables.
Modifying environment variables is not a Windows convention. There are
other ways to change the location of a user's profile folder.

> By "reasonable alternative", I mean a way that
> users can configure GHC's notion of
> "home directory" at run-time on Windows.

This is not a task for GHC, but Windows itself. GHC should just use
the win api to ask Windows for the user's home folder. That is the
current behaviour.


On Dec 16, 2007 10:56 AM, Duncan Coutts wrote:

> Note that for data files like the .ghci file it's probably better to use
> getAppUserDataDirectory "ghci" which will return $HOME/.ghci on unix
> systems and "C:/Documents And Settings/user/Application Data/ghci" on
> Windows.

This is the ideal solution for ghci on Windows.