Hi all,
I created an installer for Windows. I'd be happy if you could try it
out, give me feedback, and tell me if it works for you. Download it
there: <http://yquem.inria.fr/~protzenk/caml-installer.html>.
What does the installer do?
The installer is built using mingw/msys (*not*
cygwin), 32bit flavor. The installer :
- installs a full ocaml distribution,
- sets up the path, env variables, ld.conf, etc.
- downloads the right activetcl installer and launches its setup if
the user doesn't have the right version of activetcl installed
already,
- unless the user opts-out, the installer will download emacs,
install the caml-mode files, associate .ml and .mli files with emacs
in the windows explorer, and write the right .el files so that the
caml-mode is operational without requiring any extra configuration,
- the installer will also add start menu entries and register
uninstall information for the control panel "add/remove programs"
thingy.
Basically, once the installer is done, you can fire up an emacs and
do M-x run-caml, and it works.
Because I'm not bundling any as.exe, users will need extra steps to
enjoy native compilation. The recommended procedure (also described
at the link above) is to install mingw/msys to get a working
unix-like environment, and export the right FLEXLINKFLAGS. Because
I'm bundling flexlink in the installer, this is the only manual
action that's required.
Target audience
My main target is students / non-geeks who just want an emacs to
play with, and possibly a little bit extra environment to try out
compilation. I don't intend on investing a lot of time / energy into
this. My goal is not to provide anything like a full ocaml
distribution (I've been told godi works on windows), more like a
quick and easy way to get setup.
I would like you to implement feature X
If you have any feature requests, please submit a patch. The project
lives on GitHub <https://github.com/protz/ocaml-installer>
so please do send pull requests if you feel so inclined.
Cheers,
jonathan