RE: [Caml-list] Ocaml on windows

[David Allsopp <dra-news@metastack.com>]

Adrien Nader wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013, David Allsopp wrote:
> > Bikal Gurung wrote:
> > > Hi David,
> > >
> > > Thank you for your response. I have installed the official windows
> > > port of ocaml at http://protz.github.io/ocaml-installer/ . However, it
> mentions that MinGW/Msys is no longer supported.
> > > I rather use Mingw/Msys as well.
> >
> > I meant I use the MinGW port of the compiler rather than the MSVC port -
> I compile it using the mingw-w64 compilers provided with Cygwin. I only
> use Cygwin to compile OCaml and related libraries (again, principally for
> historical reasons, I develop using a normal command shell with GnuWin32
> to provide Unix commands). Building using Cygwin (i.e. the supported way)
> has the benefit that when you get stuck, others are likely to (be able to)
> help! :o) Do you have a particular to want to use MSYS rather than Cygwin?
> 
> By the way, wtch out for GnuWin32. It advertises a very broad support but
> it's getting old and most importantly, it lies on several things.
> For instance, fork() is implemented as:
>   int fork(void) {
>     return -1;
>   }

Oh, yes - I know it's limited! But when working from cmd, it's still slightly better than the alternatives at the moment. It's rare that something doesn't work to the point where I need to open a Cygwin terminal (regularly using make, sed, grep, m4, etc. without problem)

> > > It seems ocamlbuild requires cygwin to work, has this been your
> > > experience too? If I build the latest ocaml from trunk - 4.02dev+fp
> > > will ocaml and other tools/utilities still work on pure MingWg/Msys
> environment?
> >
> > Yes. Because I use GnuWin32 (which has its bin folder in my PATH) I
> prefer not to put C:\cygwin\bin in my PATH but symlink through the
> required utilities in C:\Dev\OCaml\bin (C:\Dev\OCaml is my installation
> root for OCaml) - my OCaml installation requires bash.exe (for
> ocamlbuild), cpp.exe (for ocamlnet) and i686-w64-mingw32-ar.exe + i686-
> w64-mingw32-as.exe + i686-w64-mingw32-dlltool.exe + i686-w64-mingw32-
> gcc.exe + i686-w64-mingw32-ranlib.exe for ocamlopt.
> 
> Do you mean you use gnuwin32's bash.exe for ocamlbuild?

No - that's done using Cygwin's. I actually don't have GnuWin32's bash (or sh) installed.


David