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

[Sylvain Le Gall <sylvain@le-gall.net>]

Hello,

On 30-03-2012, Jonathan Protzenko <jonathan.protzenko@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
> --------------090404070100000705080101
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> Hi again,
>
> Following all the good suggestions in this thread, I've updated the 
> installer. It now downloads and runs cygwin's setup.exe so as to provide 
> a fully working environment for OCaml on windows after the installer 
> completes. The cygwin installer runs in silent mode, that is, the 
> progress window shows up, but there is no user prompt.
>
> I've also looked into odb compatibility, and it looks like after writing 
> a few patches, odb now runs fine on Windows. However, Oasis-generated 
> setup.ml files do not work at all on windows. Any help in that area 
> would be highly appreciated.
>

This has nothing to do with windows. This is related the version number
of OCaml which is "4.01.0+dev0 (2012-03-12)". OASIS 0.2 doesn't handle
spaces in the version number... A more classical scheme for version
number with date is 4.01.0+dev0_2012-03-12. But anyway, this is fixed
since OASIS 0.2.1~alpha1 and will be automatically fix in any packages
hosted on the forge -- and it won't be there when your installer will
use a non dev version of OCaml.

BTW, the bug related to these issues is here:
https://forge.ocamlcore.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1135&group_id=54&atid=291
I recommend to follow it.

From what I have seen I am more concerned by the fact that the camlp4
findlib path contains strange char... There are some bugs in findlib on
Windows with pathname, I have attached a patch to the bug. Please test
and send it to Gerd Stolpmann.

Cheers
Sylvain

> Thanks,
>
> jonathan
>
> On 03/28/2012 02:24 PM, Jonathan Protzenko wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've spent the past few days improving the OCaml installer for 
>> windows. This should solve all issues that have been mentioned 
>> previously. This in preparation for the upcoming 4.0 release ; 
>> therefore, the "beta installer" below will install a fairly recent 
>> trunk version of OCaml.
>>
>> http://yquem.inria.fr/~protzenk/caml-installer/ocaml-4.01.0+dev0-i686-mingw64.exe
>>
>> *Changelog:*
>>
>> - The installer packages a working and well-configured findlib, out of 
>> the box. This means you can open up cmd.exe, type ocaml, then type 
>> #use "topfind";; in the top-level.
>> - The installer no longer blasts the PATH variable if it is too long. 
>> Moreover, it is now able to deal with PATHs that are up to 8192 bytes 
>> long.
>> - The installer is now able to deal with multi-user privileges: in 
>> particular, you can use this installer on a *limited account*: OCaml 
>> will properly install into your local "Application Data" folder if you 
>> don't have administrator rights on your machine. This should be 
>> particularly useful for school computers that run Windows.
>> - Various fixes: better cleanups on exit, minor fixes for 
>> OCamlWinPlus, properly warn the user if it was unable to download 
>> ActiveTCL from the internet.
>> - The installer packages a newer version of flexlink, so you shouldn't 
>> have any more issues with gcc not accepting the -mno-cygwin option. 
>> However, the new, official toolchain uses the mingw64 32-bit 
>> compilers. This means flexlink will look for a i686-w64-mingw32-gcc in 
>> your path whenever you try to do native compilation. The official, 
>> recommended way to work is to install cygwin and its mingw64 packages. 
>> While in theory it should be possible to work within a MSys 
>> environment, some issues [1] currently prevent you from doing so.
>>
>> [1] http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=5465
>>
>> Please let me know if anything doesn't work as expected. This will be 
>> the official installer for the 4.0 release.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> jonathan
>
>
>
> -- 
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>
>
> --------------090404070100000705080101
> Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> <html>
>   <head>
>     <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
>       http-equiv="Content-Type">
>   </head>
>   <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
>     Hi again,<br>
>     <br>
>     Following all the good suggestions in this thread, I've updated the
>     installer. It now downloads and runs cygwin's setup.exe so as to
>     provide a fully working environment for OCaml on windows after the
>     installer completes. The cygwin installer runs in silent mode, that
>     is, the progress window shows up, but there is no user prompt.<br>
>     <br>
>     I've also looked into odb compatibility, and it looks like after
>     writing a few patches, odb now runs fine on Windows. However,
>     Oasis-generated setup.ml files do not work at all on windows. Any
>     help in that area would be highly appreciated.<br>
>     <br>
>     Thanks,<br>
>     <br>
>     jonathan<br>
>     <br>
>     <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 03/28/2012 02:24 PM, Jonathan
>       Protzenko wrote:<br>
>     </div>
>     <blockquote cite="mid:4F730303.8000802@gmail.com" type="cite">
>       <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
>         charset=ISO-8859-1">
>       Hi,<br>
>       <br>
>       I've spent the past few days improving the OCaml installer for
>       windows. This should solve all issues that have been mentioned
>       previously. This in preparation for the upcoming 4.0 release ;
>       therefore, the "beta installer" below will install a fairly recent
>       trunk version of OCaml.<br>
>       <br>
>       <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
> href="http://yquem.inria.fr/%7Eprotzenk/caml-installer/ocaml-4.01.0+dev0-i686-mingw64.exe">http://yquem.inria.fr/~protzenk/caml-installer/ocaml-4.01.0+dev0-i686-mingw64.exe</a><br>
>       <br>
>       <b>Changelog:</b><br>
>       <br>
>       - The installer packages a working and well-configured findlib,
>       out of the box. This means you can open up cmd.exe, type ocaml,
>       then type #use "topfind";; in the top-level.<br>
>       - The installer no longer blasts the PATH variable if it is too
>       long. Moreover, it is now able to deal with PATHs that are up to
>       8192 bytes long.<br>
>       - The installer is now able to deal with multi-user privileges: in
>       particular, you can use this installer on a <b>limited account</b>:
>       OCaml will properly install into your local "Application Data"
>       folder if you don't have administrator rights on your machine.
>       This should be particularly useful for school computers that run
>       Windows.<br>
>       - Various fixes: better cleanups on exit, minor fixes for
>       OCamlWinPlus, properly warn the user if it was unable to download
>       ActiveTCL from the internet.<br>
>       - The installer packages a newer version of flexlink, so you
>       shouldn't have any more issues with gcc not accepting the
>       -mno-cygwin option. However, the new, official toolchain uses the
>       mingw64 32-bit compilers. This means flexlink will look for a
>       i686-w64-mingw32-gcc in your path whenever you try to do native
>       compilation. The official, recommended way to work is to install
>       cygwin and its mingw64 packages. While in theory it should be
>       possible to work within a MSys environment, some issues [1]
>       currently prevent you from doing so.<br>
>       <br>
>       [1] <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
>         href="http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=5465">http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=5465</a><br>
>       <br>
>       Please let me know if anything doesn't work as expected. This will
>       be the official installer for the 4.0 release.<br>
>       <br>
>       Cheers,<br>
>       <br>
>       jonathan<br>
>     </blockquote>
>     <br>
>     <br>
>   </body>
> </html>
>
> --------------090404070100000705080101--
>

Cheers,
Sylvain Le Gall
-- 
My company: http://www.ocamlcore.com
Linkedin:   http://fr.linkedin.com/in/sylvainlegall
Start an OCaml project here: http://forge.ocamlcore.org
OCaml blogs:                 http://planet.ocamlcore.org