Tools for Windows (was: Building Haddock on Windows)

[Simon Marlow]

On 25 October 2004 13:37, Graham Klyne wrote:

> The comments that follow are provided to underscoring how I feel the
> Haskell community is tending to favour Unix-like system users over
> Windows users.  If Haskell is to find more widespread use, I think
> it's important to make life easy for Windows users who don't have
> Unix-like tools installed (or who don't entirely understand the Unix
> way of doing things). 

I couldn't agree more.  If I had the time, I'd like to make a completely
Windows-native version of GHC (no MinGW), since the MS compiler tools
are now freely available as part of Visual C++ Express.

In the meantime, we're heading in the right direction.  GHC itself
doesn't require Cygwin to run, and Cabal is designed to work without
requiring Cygwin.  So when everything is available as a Cabal package,
you'll be able to build & install many tools and libraries without
requiring Cygwin, the exceptions being those Cabal packages which use
autoconf & make.

One day Cabal will be able to produce a .msi.  All the bits are there -
it just needs someone to put them together.  One day we'll have a
compile farm churning out .msi's (and RPMs, .debs etc.) for all the
known packages and putting them up for download on haskell.org.

Also, in case you weren't aware of this, we have some pretty detailed
instructions on setting up your build environment on Windows for
buidling GHC, here:

http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/building/winbuild.html

This is a superset of what you need to build Happy, Haddock etc.

Cheers,
	Simon