Rogan:

Thanks very much.

I began by downloading the latest gtk+ bundle from http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html

The instructions there said to just copy the files to any dir and add its ...\gtk\bin dir to my PATH, which I did, so that worked okay without admin privs.

Given that I need to use these tools on a network drive (H:), and not C:,
I have installed the Platform and gtk to:
H:\proc\tools\Haskell Platform and
H:\proc\tools\gtk

(My H: is a hdd, not usb; and I am trying to do all this without admin privs, which is working fine so far.)

The gtk tests: pkg-config --cflags gtk+-2.0 and gtk-demo run fine. Great!

**** Anyone: ****

So, I am trying to use cabal (for the first time), on a Windows XP system/network.

I need to keep everything on H:, and not use C:.

The only copy of cabal I have is what came with the Platform:
"H:\proc\tools\Haskell Platform\2010.1.0.0\lib\extralibs\bin\cabal.exe".

I placed that bin dir in my PATH and tried a "cabal update".

(Does is matter what my current dir is, when I use cabal?)

It said:
H:\proc\dev\cmd>cabal update
Config file path source is default config file.
Config file C:\Documents and Settings\pschmitz\Application Data\cabal\config
not found.
Writing default configuration to C:\Documents and
Settings\pschmitz\Application Data\cabal\config
Downloading the latest package list from hackage.haskell.org
Note: there is a new version of cabal-install available.
To upgrade, run: cabal install cabal-install

So, by default, cabal wants to put its config and updates on C:.

I looked at C:\Documents and Settings\pschmitz\Application Data\cabal\config

It has various references to C:, some commented out. E.g.:

remote-repo-cache: C:\Documents and Settings\pschmitz\Application Data\cabal\packages

build-summary: C:\Documents and Settings\pschmitz\Application Data\cabal\logs\build.log

install-dirs user
-- prefix: "C:\\Documents and Settings\\pschmitz\\Application Data\\cabal"

etc.

I also reviewed the Cabal User's Guide, including section
4.1.2.2 Paths in the simple build system
which has a table with command line switches and pathname defaults for Windows including:
--prefix (global installs with the --global flag)
C:\ProgramFiles\Haskell
and
--prefix (per-user installs with the --user flag)
C:\DocumentsAndSettings\user\ApplicationData\cabal

Given that I want to keep everything on H:,
and assuming that I don't want to place the Cabal configs and updates in the Platform tree (H:\proc\tools\Haskell Platform),
I would _like_ to create a dir such as
H:\proc\tools\cabal
to hold everything that Cabal would normally put on C:.

*** I'm afraid I'm having trouble figuring out how to accomplish this.

Is there (hopefully) a combination of cabal command line switches that will create a new config file over on H: for me,
or must I edit the config file directly and move it to H:?

And then, how do I invoke cabal each time, to get it to use its tree on H: (and ignore C:) ?

Thanks (very much) in advance.