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surviving windows

Last edited by Ben Gamari
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Surviving Windows as a Unix user: A glossary

Here's a summary of words you will see while working on GHC on Windows. Some other helpful background can be found on

Good luck.

msys2 (the distribution)

msys2 is a software distribution packaging a number of components including,

  • the msys2 runtime (see below)
  • the pacman package manager
  • a basic UNIX-like command-line environment
  • a toolchain for compiling code written for a POSIX environment (linking against the msys2 runtime)
  • 64- and 32-bit mingw toolchains

msys2 (the runtime)

The msys2 distribution is built upon the msys2 runtime, which is a fork of the Cygwin runtime. The runtime provides basic POSIX APIs, making it possible to run software written to run on a POSIX-like system on Windows.

The msys2 and Cygwin runtimes used to differ strongly, but have been converging (see https://github.com/Alexpux/MSYS2-packages/blob/master/msys2-runtime/PKGBUILD for the current patches). Most of the remaining differences are to make the provided environment a bit closer to Windows than Cygwin's behavior.

msys2 (the toolchain)

The msys2 distribution includes a compiler toolchain which can be used to compile code written for a POSIX environment. It can be found in /usr/bin (e.g. /usr/bin/gcc).

Executables compiled with this toolchain will link against the msys2 runtime. Consequently this is not the toolchain to use to build GHC. Instead use the mingw-w64 toolchain (see below).

Cygwin (the runtime)

Cygwin is a runtime library providing a POSIX-like environment, allowing software written for POSIX systems to run on Windows unchanged. The msys2 distribution that we use in GHC doesn't use Cygwin, but instead the msys2 fork (see above). Cygwin differs from msys in that it seeks to provide complete Linux emulation in user-mode; in contrast, msys2 merely seeks to provide enough POSIX support to be able to use toolchains such as mingw-w64 to make native binaries.

Cygwin (the distribution)

Cygwin is also a distribution built upon the Cygwin runtime providing a Linux-like environment on Windows. We don't use it; instead we use the msys2 distribution.

Mingw-w64

Mingw-w64 is a compiler toolchain based upon gcc targeting Windows systems which is packaged with the msys2 distribution. It started as a fork of the mingw toolchain. A fair amount of useful information about mingw-w64 can be found on the project's wiki.

Executables produced with the mingw-w64 toolchain will link only against msvcrt and a few native Windows libraries (e.g. ntdll and kernel32).

mingw

mingw is a compiler toolchain based upon gcc targeting Windows systems. The project is now unmaintained. mingw is not used by msys2 distribution used by GHC; instead it packages the mingw-w64 toolchain.

msys

msys (short for "minimal system) is a component of the mingw project which provides Windows ports of a lightweight Unix-like shell environment. It does not provide a compiler toolchain; this is provided by mingw.

Note that GHC uses neither mingw nor msys; rather we use mingw-w64 and msys2.

msvcrt

The Microsoft Visual C runtime. This is the libc of the Windows world. It also offers a number of POSIX compatibility routines (e.g. exec) which aren't POSIX compliant.

mintty

mintty is a terminal emulator shipped with the msys2 distribution (and Cygwin). It's not so great; you probably want to use something else (e.g. ConEmu).

Linux on Windows

Linux on Windows (also known as the Windows Subsystem for Linux, WSL, or Drawbridge) is a project undertaken by Microsoft seeking to add a Windows subsystem to the Windows kernel, allowing full user-mode emulation of a Linux environment. Currently we don't use LoW for GHC development.

Useful tools

  • Dependencies is a very useful tool for diagnosing dynamic linking issues
  • CFF Explorer is useful for exploring the structure of portable executable objects
  • In the Windows SDK:
    • the gflags.exe tool can be used to enable "loader snaps" for a particular executable. When enabled, the dynamic linker will emit debug output when the executable is run under windbg
    • windbg is the Windows debugger, apparently last updated circa 1992
  • The version of windbg in the Windows Store appears to be much better than that in the SDK
  • x64dbg is an alternative FOSS debugger
  • The sysinternals tools
    • DebugView allows one to view debug output from the system (e.g. the loader snaps mentioned above) without Windbg
    • Process Explorer provides a nice view onto the process tree and process state
    • Process Monitor provides an strace-like view of system calls
  • Windows Performance Record/Analyzer is another mechanism capable of tracing system calls
  • ConEmu is a decent terminal emulator for Windows