Help on installing OCaml on Windows XP

Help on installing OCaml on Windows XP

[Sam Block]

Hi all!  I'm new to the list, and am having a fair amount of trouble  
getting OCaml up and running on Windows XP (I have it running on Linux  
just fine).

Here's my goal: I want to run ocamlopt and have a binary executable  
for my project on Windows and be able to give it to my friend and have  
it run; this would rule out Cygwin, since I'd need extra .dll files.   
I don't want that, so I wanted to go ahead and download one of the  
other OCaml binary installables (MSVC or MinGW).  However, I tried  
both, and I keep getting the same error:

>> ocamlopt -o geomancian figures.ml geomancian.ml
>
> 'as' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable
> program or batch file.
> File "figures.ml", line 1, characters 0-1:
> Error: Assembler error, input left in file <directory
> omitted>\camlasme1fe97.s

I'm at a loss of what to do next.  I've googled for pages and pages of  
results that, while this problem isn't uncommon, I haven't found any  
solution to it.  I feel bad asking this, but could someone guide me  
through the installation on Windows step-by-step?  I'd really  
appreciate it.

Thanks!
-Sam Block

Re: [Caml-list] Help on installing OCaml on Windows XP

[Shailesh Khandekar]

Hello Sam,
> Here's my goal: I want to run ocamlopt and have a binary executable 
> for my project on Windows and be able to give it to my friend and have 
> it run; this would rule out Cygwin, since I'd need extra .dll files.  
> I don't want that, so I wanted to go ahead and download one of the 
> other OCaml binary installables (MSVC or MinGW).  However, I tried 
> both, and I keep getting the same error:
>
>>> ocamlopt -o geomancian figures.ml geomancian.ml
>>
>> 'as' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable
>> program or batch file.
>> File "figures.ml", line 1, characters 0-1:
>> Error: Assembler error, input left in file <directory
>> omitted>\camlasme1fe97.s
Ocamlopt is looking for the assembler, i.e. 'as' command. Looks like the 
binutils is missing on the target machine. You can get it from:
    
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=11290&release_id=19108

The Ocaml download page for binary distribution for Microsoft Windows at:
     http://caml.inria.fr/download.en.html
mentions that, some features require the Cygwin environment (for MinGW) 
and similar for MSVC.

I'm curious to find out whether it would work with just a mingw-msys 
installation, without using Cygwin. Waiting for the download to finish 
on my machine.

Best regards,

Shailesh S. Khandekar,
Pune.

Re: [Caml-list] Help on installing OCaml on Windows XP

[Christophe TROESTLER]

Hi,

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:05:36 -0500, Sam Block wrote:
> 
> Here's my goal: I want to run ocamlopt and have a binary executable for my project on Windows and be able to give it to my friend and have it run; this would rule out Cygwin, since I'd need extra .dll files.  I don't want that, so I wanted to go ahead and download one of the other OCaml binary installables (MSVC or MinGW).  However, I tried both, and I keep getting the same error:
> 

I guess you did not perform the neceessary steps indicated in the file
README.win32:
http://camlcvs.inria.fr/cgi-bin/cvsweb/ocaml/README.win32?rev=1.46

Cheers,
ChriS