[Zero-install-devel] Compiling OCaml on Windows

[Thomas L. <ta...@gm...>]

Here are my notes on compiling 0install's OCaml code on Windows.
Probably I took some wrong turns (I don't know much about Windows).

I built on Windows 7, and then ran the (1.5 MB) binary on Windows XP.
I didn't have to install anything extra on XP to make the binary work.
So, these instructions are only for developers, not users.

Installed http://protz.github.io/ocaml-installer/ on Windows 7.

It said it was installing Cygwin, but no sign of a bash shell
afterwards, just Cygwin setup. I ran Cygwin Setup and it downloaded
another load of stuff. In addition to the defaults, I installed make.

Running "make" from a Cygwin terminal in the 0install/ocaml directory
shows that the Xmlm and Yojson libraries we need are missing.

opam doesn't work on Windows
(https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/issues/246) so had to install the
libraries manually. No problem; 0install could handle this on Windows.

Downloaded Yojson.
Attempt co compile Yojson. No Cppo.
Got that too.

i686-w64-mingw32-as not found. Wrong turn: Installed that from mingw
project on sf.net. Accepted defaults (C compiler only). Didn't help.

Retried using Cygwin Setup. Installed mingw64-i686-binutils.

Now missing i686-w64-mingw32-gcc.

Installed mingw64-i686-gcc using Cygwin. Didn't help.
Installed mingw64-i686-gcc-core using Cygwin. Now it works.

"Error during linking". However, I did end up with a 'cppo.exe'
binary, which seemed to work. Did
"make install" and that worked fine.

Installed easy-format. No problems.
Installed biniou.  No problems.
Installed yojson. No problems.
Installed Xmlm. No Makefile, but just follow instructions in README.
"Access is denied" trying to write to "Program Files (x86)". Ignored
problem; seemed to be installed anyway.

Then "make" in 0install/ocaml worked and generated _build/main.native,
which is the binary I tested with.


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard        http://0install.net/
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