<div dir="ltr">Hey,<div><br></div><div>I have created <a href="https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/WindowsTaskForce">https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/WindowsTaskForce</a>, and added the two people from whom I heard a confirmation that they want to be on the list. Please edit the page and add yourself if you should be on that list. Feel free to hack the page up and add additional info as you see fit.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Simon Peyton Jones <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com" target="_blank">simonpj@microsoft.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:36.0pt"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">That sounds helpful, thank you.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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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”.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Simon<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""> <a href="mailto:lonetiger@gmail.com" target="_blank">lonetiger@gmail.com</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:lonetiger@gmail.com" target="_blank">lonetiger@gmail.com</a>]
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<b>Sent:</b> 09 October 2014 06:04<br>
<b>To:</b> Gintautas Miliauskas; Simon Peyton Jones<br>
<b>Cc:</b> Randy Polen; kyra; Marek Wawrzos; Roman Kuznetsov; Neil Mitchell; <a href="mailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org" target="_blank">ghc-devs@haskell.org</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: Building ghc on Windows with msys2<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Hi Gintautas,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">> 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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Cheers,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Tamar<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";letter-spacing:.25pt">From:</span></b><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";letter-spacing:.25pt"> <a href="mailto:gintautas.miliauskas@gmail.com" target="_blank">Gintautas Miliauskas</a><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, October 2, 2014 22:32<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:simonpj@microsoft.com" target="_blank">Simon Peyton Jones</a><br>
<b>Cc:</b> <a href="mailto:randyhaskell@outlook.com" target="_blank">Randy Polen</a>,
<a href="mailto:kyrab@mail.ru" target="_blank">kyra</a>, <a href="mailto:marek.28.93@gmail.com" target="_blank">
Marek Wawrzos</a>, <a href="mailto:lonetiger@gmail.com" target="_blank">Tamar Christina</a>,
<a href="mailto:kuznero@hotmail.com" target="_blank">Roman Kuznetsov</a>, <a href="mailto:ndmitchell@gmail.com" target="_blank">
Neil Mitchell</a>, <a href="mailto:ghc-devs@haskell.org" target="_blank">ghc-devs@haskell.org</a></span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Hi,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">> 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?</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">An advantage of having a working group is that you can
<b>decide</b> 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?</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">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?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d"> </span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">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.)</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""> <u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">I agree with using msys2 as the main choice. (I’m using it myself.) It may be that Gintautas’s page
<a href="https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows/MSYS2" target="_blank">
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows/MSYS2</a> is already sufficient. Although I’d like to see it tested by others. For example, I found that it was CRUCIAL to set
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">MSYSYSTEM=MINGW
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">whereas Gintautas’s page says nothing about that. </span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">Other small thoughts:</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Symbol;color:#1f497d">·</span><span style="font-size:7.0pt;color:#1f497d">
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">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.</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">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?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Symbol;color:#1f497d">·</span><span style="font-size:7.0pt;color:#1f497d">
</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">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.</span><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">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.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">-- <br>
Gintautas Miliauskas <u></u><u></u></span></p>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>Gintautas Miliauskas
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