2.2. Installing on Windows

Getting the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (post 5.02) to run on Windows platforms is a snap: the Installshield does everything you need.

2.2.1. Installing GHC on Windows

To install GHC, use the following steps:

You do not need the Cygwin toolchain, or anything else, to install and run GHC.

An installation of GHC requires about 140M of disk space. To run GHC comfortably, your machine should have at least 64M of memory.

2.2.2. Moving GHC around

At the moment, GHC installs in a fixed place (c:/ghc/ghc-x.yy, but once it is installed, you can freely move the entire GHC tree just by copying the ghc-x.yy directory. (You may need to fix up the links in "Start/Programs/Glasgow Haskell Compiler" if you do this.)

It is OK to put GHC tree in a directory whose path involves spaces. However, don't do this if you use want to use GHC with the Cygwin tools, because Cygwin can get confused when this happpens. We havn't quite got to the bottom of this, but so far as we know it's not a problem with GHC itself. Nevertheless, just to keep life simple we usually put GHC in a place with a space-free path.

2.2.3. Installing ghc-win32 FAQ

2.2.3.1. I'm having trouble with symlinks.
2.2.3.2. I'm getting “permission denied” messages from the rm or mv.

2.2.3.1. I'm having trouble with symlinks.

Symlinks only work under Cygwin (Section 2.1.2.1), so binaries not linked to the Cygwin DLL, in particular those built for Mingwin, will not work with symlinks.

2.2.3.2. I'm getting “permission denied” messages from the rm or mv.

This can have various causes: trying to rename a directory when an Explorer window is open on it tends to fail. Closing the window generally cures the problem, but sometimes its cause is more mysterious, and logging off and back on or rebooting may be the quickest cure.