On 11 December 2011 04:56, Asokan Pichai wrote:

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 10:08 AM, MJ Williams wrote:

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Hi guys, I understand there's a UNIX-like environment that one can install on Windows CYGWIN?

No - for binding to C libraries you want to use MinGW / MSYS. The reason for this is basically that everyone else does. Linking static libraries is a bit different internally to Cygwin and it does not seem to "just work" whereas it usually does on MinGW provided you have the C library already working.

On 11 December 2011 08:41, Asokan Pichai wrote:

The OP's question is for a Unix-like environment on Windows; which is Cygwin.

Indeed (and also MSYS), but the OP wants especially to work with PCRE and the Haskell bindings to it are unlikely to work directly with Cygwin, but they should with MinGW / MSYS.

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The reason for this is basically that everyone else does. Linking static libraries is a bit different internally to Cygwin and it does not seem to "just work" whereas it usually does on MinGW provided you have the C library already working.

I do not understand this part.

Yes - it wasn't at all clear. FFI bindings (in Haskell) link to C static libraries - *.a files on Cygwin or MSYS (plus headers are needed during compilation). There are differences between Cygwin and MSYS *.a files, I know little about what the differences are but I know that the consequence is linking to Cygwin libs doesn't work seemlessly with GHC[*]. Maybe it wouldn't be much work to get GHC working with Cygwin libs but no-one appears to have done it and documented their success, hence "everyone" uses MSYS where things are already working. [*] GHC actually ships with build tools from MinGW / MSYS, but once you start working with FFI bindings you really want a proper installation of MSYS.