On Aug 10, 2008, at 18:08 PM, Trent W. Buck wrote:

> Petr Rockai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> Btw., I think that a good, consistent and self-contained set of
>> Windows binaries would help a tremendous lot. Just my 2 cents.
>
> Could this be addressed by a buildbot running on Windows and uploading
> the result (e.g. by key-based SFTP on a restricted account) to
> darcs.net?

It certainly could, and should.  I am willing to do the buildbot  
scripting for this.  The reason that I have not already done so,  
which may be a bad reason, is that I dislike dealing with autoconf on  
Windows.  It can be made to work, but only by such stupid kludges as  
installing a C compiler which will not be used by GHC to compile  
darcs, but will be used by autoconf to decide how to configure GHC.   
If the C compiler that you install happens to trigger autoconf to set  
the right settings for GHC such that GHC works when it uses its own  
internal C compiler, then the build will work.

But I am dissatisfied with that approach, and my attempt to fix the  
darcs autoconf script was disastrous -- I wasted a day and got very  
frustrated.  My conclusion was that autoconf is great for porting C  
programs to different flavors of Unix, but not great for porting  
Haskell programs to non-Unix platforms.

Since then whenever I considered hacking on the darcs build system,  
for example to automate building Windows binaries, I remember how  
unpleasant my autoconf experience was and I suddenly find myself  
thinking about some other fun project.  The next thing I know weeks  
have gone by and I haven't done anything on the project of automating  
Windows builds of darcs.

Like I say, this isn't a good reason for me to procrastinate  
automating the Windows build system.  I should probably just get over  
my distaste for autoconf and work on automating the Windows build.

But first I'm probably going to experiment with using Gwern's patches  
that build darcs with Cabal instead of autoconf.  That just seems  
more... fun.

Regards,

Zooko
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