[Mingw-users] MSYS setup

[Al S. <al...@al...>]

I'm posting this here because I don't want to subscribe to another list just
to post one message.

I downloaded MSYS and ran its setup program. The program installs MSYS and
then enters a command-line post-installation process to establish some kind
of association between MSYS and MinGW. Its purpose is unclear, and the
implications for not doing it are unclear, but I figured it was important,
so I allowed it to proceed. It asks where MinGW is installed. Two problems:

1. If you make a mistake with the path, setup is unforgiving. It does not
allow you to retry and it does not provide instructions for starting over.

2. Setup refuses to recognize a path to MinGW that includes spaces in the
path specification. I made several tries by uninstalling and reinstalling
with every variety of quoted and unquoted path specifications and both kinds
of slashes I could think of. Setup says it can't find c:/mingw/mingw
3.2/bin/gcc.exe. I'm assuming it's because of the space in one of the path's
directory names.

I have a long standing policy of never running software that can't get setup
right, not even beta software. If this gets fixed, which I'm sure it will,
I'll give MSYS another shot.

Al Stevens
Dr. Dobb's Journal