On 27. 6. 2016 23:33, Simon Peyton Jones via ghc-devs wrote:
1. I just left the machine for 10-15 mins and lo! the shell windows opened up. It just took a loooong time.
I could be something with Active Directory. Cygwin (upon which is MSYS2 based) integrates with AD, but there are numerous (google-able) reports of huge slowdowns related to this.
At this point, starting a new shell no longer took a long time. It all seemed to be working.
Also don't forget to exclude `C:\msys64` from any anti-virus scans.
2. I then ran pacman -Syuu as instructed on the installation page: https://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/MSYS2%20installation/
I'm afraid you misread the instructions. You should run `update-core` first to upgrade to the newer pacman that handles `pacman -Syuu` correctly. (New installer packages with an up-to-date pacman are planned.)
The log of what happened is below. There are numerous failures involving Cygwin, which I do not have installed, at least not so far as I know. I do not know if these failures matter.
They might. See below.
3. After this step, starting a shell failed altogether with "c:/msys64/mingw64_shell.bat is not recognised as an internal or external command". And sure enough, there is no such file. Presumably it existed in step 1. So perhaps step 2 deleted it?
If the post-install script for `filesystem` were able to run, it would inform you that `*_shell.bat` are deprecated and were removed. I see you have `msys2-launcher-git` installed -- you can then use `C:\msys64\mingw64.exe` (and even pin it to the taskbar).
4. As you mention, I then tried msys2_shell.cmd. It worked -- with a noticeable delay of 5 seconds or so.
May still be AD-related.
* should I worry about all those install errs
I recommend staying on the safe side and nuke the installation. Alternatively, reinstall the packages that had failures (`pacman -S gcc-libs gettext gmp ...`).
* how can I debug what's happening with that long delay
`/etc/nsswitch.conf` allows for some configuration. See https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/ntsec.html#ntsec-mapping-nsswitch-pwdgrp.
* Should I nuke the start menu shortcuts that the msys64 installer so carefully installed in favour of msys2_shell.cmd?
Yes or see above. Note that you might need `msys2_shell.cmd -mingw64` instead (not sure if it matters for GHC). -- David Macek