ghc on win2k ...

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

| I think you need cygwin to install/run it.
|=20
| >Has anyone gotten ghc operative over win2k? I couldnt even get
| >the v4.08
| >installshield to work for me (it installed fine but then ghc=20
| >just wouldnt
| >do anything, not even an error report).

No longer!  You don't need cygwin, or indeed *anything*.   Just install
GHC and away you go.  (On the other hand, if you *do* have cygwin,
GHC won't intefere with it.)

Nevertheless, you have good reason to not know this: it's not on
GHC's web page.  Only readers of the Haskell list will have seen=20
Reuben's announcement (below).

We expect to make a new release of GHC, 5.02, at the end of next week,
just before ICFP.   It fixes many bugs in the release below -- but none
the less, the one below is fine for most purposes.

Simon

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

I've updated the test Windows InstallShield of GHCi 5.01 available from

http://www.haskell.org/ghc/dist/5.00.2/ghc-5-01.exe

(There's no link to it on the web site)

In case you missed the previous announcement, this is a test release,
but seems fairly stable (I use it all the time). It has the following
features:

* GHCi: now you can use GHC interpretively under Windows. You can just
run
  the InstallShield, and double-click on GHCi to get going.

* Complete install: everything you need to use GHC is included; Cygwin
is
  no longer required; also, unlike recent 4.08.2 releases, it doesn't
  interfere with any Cygwin installation you may already have

Changes from the previous test release, "Zarjaz":

* Now installs in Program Files by default (supports paths containing
  spaces).

* Installs the profiling libraries and imports (the previous test
release
  included them, but for mysterious reasons they weren't actually
  installed).

Also note that as one user found, the supplied gcc doesn't like
identifiers containing top-bit-set characters, so if you want to use
them you must use the native code generator.