RE: [Caml-list] New version of the binary installer for Windows

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

Wojciech Meyer wrote:
> Hi Jonathan,
> 
> Thanks for the installer!
> 
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 4:19 PM, Jonathan Protzenko
> <jonathan.protzenko@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Unfortunately, ocamlbuild requires a unix-like environment, with a few
> > utilities in the path: bash, mkdir...
> 
> It looks like he's got a partially installed environment - as bash is
> there.
> 
> > The installer only provides the very basics. It does not provide a
> > unix environment on windows, only the ocaml binaries, flexlink, and
> > ocamlfind. If you want to go further, e.g. use ocamlbuild, or benefit
> > from native compilation, you need to install a development
> > environment, such as cygwin, or msys. Currently, because of bug 5465,
> cygwin is the recommended way.
> >
> > I've successfully used ocamlbuild under cygwin and msys, and it works
> fine.
> 
> How about bundling the installer with cygwin or msys? Beware of the
> license issues however.

I haven't had a go with it, but will try it as soon as possible. However, it sounded from the description as though it offers to install ActiveTCL by downloading it from the internet and running the installer for you. Couldn't it then offer the same for Cygwin? It would simply need to pull down http://cygwin.com/setup.exe and then run:

setup.exe --root=C:\cygwin --download --quiet-mode --no-startmenu --no-desktop --packages=make,mingw64-i686-gcc-g++ >nul 2>&1

which would circumvent all licensing issues, I believe.

My own install script also adds git, subversion, patch, m4 and unzip as these are also needed for building various libraries from source. I install g++ because SpiderMonkey has portions written in C++ but you can install mingw64-i686-gcc-core instead if you don't want a C++ compiler.


David