I wrote:
Removing support for %HOME% has suddenly broken many programs. If people don't like it, we can consider deprecating it in some future version of GHC, but for now it should put back.
Simon Marlow wrote:
Only GHCi has changed here. Perhaps you're under the impression that we recently changed the behaviour of getHomeDirectory? In fact, it was introduced in GHC 6.4 and has always had the same behaviour, calling SHGetFolderPath on Windows.
Thanks, Simon. Yes, I was originally under that mistaken impression, but Duncan set me straight. I am glad that %HOMEPATH% is not being used, though ShGetFolderPath sometimes gives the wrong answer on Vista. So having a customizable notion of home directory on Windows would be a new feature for getHomeDirectory. For GHCi it would be rescuing a recently removed one. -Yitz