Hi
Well the simple solution is to change the version of tar.exe you've got to one that does support gzip. I'm sure there must be one.
Any idea where I might find it? The words MingW or Cygwin will not be appreciated :-) I have copies of tar and gzip that are Windows native versions, very handy, and could easily be distributed with Cabal on Windows. They come to 155Kb in total, so its not unreasonable to ship them.
The right solution imho is to move the sdist feature into cabal-install where it can depend on the tar and zlib packages.
What is the likely timeframe for this? If its more than a few weeks, then there should really be some way for Windows users to create Cabal packages before this. As a longer term goal, it does seem quite reasonable. Thanks Neil