Stephen Tetley wrote:
Andrew, I was going to chastise you for being the only Windows developer who has problems with MinGW / MSYS and spreading that unpleasant internet commodity "FUD". However, I've just gone back to mingw.org and its gone from "somewhat confusing" circa the last time I installed (Christmas 2009) to "frankly abysmal". So while is was easy to install MinGW / MSys a year ago I'll willing concede that it is difficult now.
[A side issue - anyone who thinks socializing Hackage is a good idea should pay mingw.org a visit...]
I followed this guide the last time I installed:
http://www.mingw.org/faq/How_do_I_install_MSYS
Having a slightly out-of-date installation shouldn't be a problem for Haskell development.
Well, part of the issue is that it just annoys me as a matter of principle that I have to install a *Unix* emulator in order to write *Windows* software. What's up with that? But anyway, as I say, I figured I could just install the emulator on a VM, build the libraries once, and then use the binaries anywhere. Unfortunately, I was eventually forced to give up after trying to install MSYS / MinGW. You'd think you could just download a file and unzip it, or maybe run an installer... but no. That would be far too easy.