Install Ehc Under Windows

You will need tools from six different sources, so have some patience to install them all. The good news is that you may find the tools useful in different situations as well.

1. Cygwin: a command line shell

Install Cygwin

• A root directory. As this directory might need to be mentioned in various places, a short path without spaces is recommended, for example d:\cygwin.
• A local package directory. This directory is used to store temporary files during download and installation of Cygwin. Any path will do, for example d:\downloads\cygwin.
• Internet connection type, and mirrorsite to download from. Default choices will do.
• Packages to select: in addition to the default selection, we need the following: Devel/gcc, Devel/make, Interpreters/perl, Interpreters/m4, Utils/file, Web/curl, Web/wget. You may also want to have Publishing/tetex, but you can always add more packages later by starting the installation program again.

to test whether it works:
Start Cygwin and try some Unix commands (but DOS-commands also work), for example:

ls
date
dir

ls /
ls c:/
ls /cygdrive/c

Mount your disks

mount c: /c
mount d: /d

Set environment variable

export TMP='D:/temp'

2. Tortoise: SVN version management client

EHC is maintained in a collaborative version management system called Subversion, or SVN. You need a Subversion client to download files from a repository. Tortoise offers a graphical user interface to SVN. It integrates in the explorer, so you will hardly notice it exists as a seprate program: you will just notice enhanced explorer behaviour.

Download Tortoise SVN here and install it (as administrator).

to test whether it works:
Open the file explorer, and rightclick any directory. A context menu Tortoise SVN should be present.

3. Haskell compiler and library manager

GHC: Haskell compiler

• Download the Haskell platform and install it.
  It is wise to install the compiler in a directory without spaces in its name, for example d:\haskell.

to test whether it works:

• Type ghc --help at the Cygwin prompt. It should reply with a couple screensful usage information. If it doesn't work, the PATH is probably not right.
• Create a file Test.hs containing a simple Haskell program:

  square x = x*x main = putStrLn (show (square 5))

  Compile it with ghc Test.hs and run it by starting main.exe.
• If you include a module header in your program, like

  module Test where square x = x*x main = putStrLn (show (square 5))

  you should compile it by ghc --make Test.hs

Cabal: Library manager

Cabal is a library manager for Haskell libraries. It comes standard with the Haskell platform now.

to test whether it works:

• Type cabal --help at the Cygwin prompt. It should reply with a couple screensful usage information.

Some libraries and tools needed

Now use the Cabal library manager to grab additional libraries and tools. This should be done in administrator mode. It is wise not to use the default destination, as that path contains spaces which might get us into trouble later. Better use the d:\haskell diretory (or similar) you created earlier.

cabal update
cabal install uulib --libdir=d:/haskell
cabal install uuagc --bindir=c:/cygwin/bin

4. EHC: Extensible Haskell Compiler

Now you are ready to get our Extensible Haskell Compiler, and soon you'll be extending it yourself. to download:

• Create a directory ehc in a convenient place.
• Rightclick it in the browser and choose SVN Checkout... from the context menu
• Type the following URL: https://subversion.cs.uu.nl/repos/project.UHC.pub/trunk/EHC
• Expect 14.5 Megabytes to be downloaded.

To install the system, start Cygwin and go to the directory you just created. Then type the following commands:

./configure
make 100/ehc
make 100/ehclibs

Then wait a long time (around 40 minutes), as not only the compiler has to be build, but also the supporting development tools shuffle and ruler and two third-party libraries: bgc for garbage collection and gmp for muliple precision arithmetic.

Note that there are various versions of the compiler, which correspond to various stages of extension. In the example above, we build version 100 of the compiler, which is the full-feature compiler.

To test whether it works:
Type the following commands:

cd demo
../install/100/bin/ehc.exe hello.hs
hello.exe

Alternatively, you can use --target=C to use the Silly-C backend.

Troubleshooting

If you get an error like "target pattern contains no `%'", perform the following steps:

• Open the cygwin\bin directory (for example d:\cygwin\bin)
• Rename make.exe to make_old.exe
• Download http://www.cmake.org/files/cygwin/make.exe and save it as make.exe in that directory

-- JeroenBransen - 13 Apr 2012