Re: [Caml-list] Ocaml on windows

[Adrien Nader <adrien@notk.org>]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> Am 24.06.2013 19:21:05 schrieb(en) Adrien Nader:
> >On Mon, Jun 24, 2013, Bikal Gurung wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I am looking to use ocaml to implement a project for my
> >employer. However, the
> >> environment is Windows OS. I am using cygwin and so far it seems
> >to work but
> >> curious on experiences others have on using ocaml on windows -
> >both as a
> >> development and deployment platform. Also has anyone tried using
> >opam on
> >> windows? Does it work?
> >>
> >
> >I believe opam on windows is pretty far away.
> >
> >The issues can be summarized in a few words: source-based package
> >manager for ocaml on pure windows.
> >For this to fully work, you need a perfect toolchain where everything
> >works wonderfully.
> 
> I can quickly report what I did to get GODI working on Windows. It
> is of course not "pure Windows": You need Cygwin for doing builds,
> but that's "only" because almost all build utilities are Unix-ish,
> and it would be very hard to build anything without having some
> shell and the usual file utilities at hand. (AFAIK the only build
> utility that works in a pure Windows environment is omake.)
> 
> So GODI assumes a mixed Windows environment, and this is in deed
> doable. ocaml and all compiled code run on native Windows here, and
> for executing build scripts there is Cygwin. This solves the utility
> question, but you get in return some new problems, like the
> different calling conventions. All GODI core utilities have e.g.
> built-in support for translating Cygwin paths forth and back, so
> they can operate on Cygwin paths although they are native Windows
> programs. Another problem are the strange Windows rules for
> splitting a command-line into words. As generic fallback when there
> are too many "bad characters" in the command line I simply generate
> a temporary script that is then executed with bash. There are
> probably more such tricks I currently do not remember.
> 
> So this mixed mode is actually doable, and works so well that many
> GODI packages can be built on Windows without any special porting
> effort. If you look at WODI, the special adaption of GODI for
> Windows, you will mostly find additional C libraries (because you
> cannot link against the libraries coming with Cygwin).
> 
> We could go further and replace Cygwin completely only if we had a
> substitute for the shell utilities. That's the core of the problem,
> and it's a hard one, because many scripts assume 100% POSIX
> behavior, and e.g. using Windows command-line conventions is out of
> question.

Yup, agreed, mixed is doable as WODI has proven.
The most annoying constraint is probably that it slows down builds a lot
and it makes frequent updates very painful (that makes source-based
package managers far less attractive on windows [ note that on linux, I
use and enjoy godi ]).

That said, I've used ocaml on pure windows (besides bash for
ocamlbuild). I was running everything from cmd.exe and it worked well.
I had also built libraries which rely on oasis and it had gone well too.
I believe that with a sufficiently full-featured build system, pure
windows is doable and that's something which is probably fairly close.

-- 
Adrien Nader