Sorry I wasn't being precise.
The error is code independent, I tested ocamlopt on a "helloworld program".
I am not using cygwin because I am trying to produce binaries which do not
require cygwin to launch and I understand that there is a particular dll
that is required to execute cygwin based compilation (correct?).

I am using ocaml-3.11.0-win-msvc.exe that I downloaded from the web site
(the gui and byte code generator work just fine).

Stuff I did (probably wrongly):

- install ocaml-3.11 using the installer
- install MinGW Shell
- MASM32 editor (for ml.exe)
- flexdll (for flexlib)
- and microsoft SDK (for uuid.lib)

The result is a code that compiles just fine until the linking step where I
get this weird error.

These steps I got from an old thread (2004) here:
http://groups.google.com/group/fa.caml/browse_thread/thread/fddaa68b3f497ec2

I was not able to find more recent instructions.


On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 11:13 PM, David Allsopp <dra-news@metastack.com>wrote:

> Jean Krivine wrote:
>
> > I am trying to produce windows native code for windows, to do so I
> > have followed the instructions I found on different sources I am almost
> > done but I get one last error during linking:
>
> Which sources?
>
> > ** Fatal error: cannot find file "OLDNAMES"
> >
> > File "caml_startup", Line 1, character 0-1
> >
> > Error: Error during linking
>
> What command have you run to get this error?
>
> > I am using windows 7 and MinGW +  Windows SDK 6.2 (to get uuid.lib)
> > + masm32 (to have ml.exe)
>
> Are you compiling OCaml from sources or using a pre-packaged version (and
> if so, which version of OCaml and which port). It's odd that you're
> referring to Windows 7 + MinGW - if you're building for the MS toolchain,
> then you should be using Cygwin but I wonder if that's just that you've
> called it by the wrong name (equally, I've got a feeling that building with
> MSYS now works, but I think that compiling under Cygwin is still the
> "official" method).
>
> I haven't done an MS toolchain build of OCaml for a while, but I'm
> reasonably sure that when I last used it, the Windows Server 2008 SDK
> contains both the 32 and 64 bit assembler (no need to download masm
> separately any more for 32 bit builds).
>
>
> David