I'm trying to build ghc (the 5.04.3 source tarball) on Windows, but right after the ghc-inplace is written and is used to build something, ghc fails. If I cut and paste the command* and run it with -v, it's evident that ghc is trying to execute /cygdrive/c/mingw/bin/gcc, which is the gcc that I ./configured --with-gcc.

I think we usually use a DOS-style path when specifying --with-gcc, which avoids this problem. I'll let someone more windows-savvy answer your other questions... Cheers, Simon