Nix: Windows MinGW/MSYS2 support

Created on 10 Apr 2017 · 10Comments · Source: NixOS/nix

Currently Stack is using MinGW32/MinGW64 under Windows to cope with C/C++/Fortran dependencies. Stack + Nix is a great tandem that could be turned into very easy to deploy system on most major operating systems. That way Haskell will become even more popular language. Currently Nix support Linux and Mac OS only.
What you think over the idea to use MinGW tooling in combination with Nix for building C/C++ dependencies under Windows?

Source

varosi

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Most helpful comment

@domenkozar I do not think that using WSL is "under Windows".

be5invis on 28 Apr 2017

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All 10 comments

It's probably not what you want, but I used to use nix for cross-compilation Linux->MinGW – to do CI on Windows SW without actually needing any Windows. Some packages needed fixing, but most problems could be resolved by finding patches on the internet (pushed those to the official nixpkgs repo).

I heard of standard nix used on i686-cygwin, not too long ago, but it's certainly not among the "top-tier" platforms.

vcunat on 10 Apr 2017

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Great! I mean in general to be officially supported.

varosi on 11 Apr 2017

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IMHO "official support" is mainly about getting enough people interested so they manage to keep it working well. Some basic cross-compiled binaries are produced by the build farm already: http://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nixpkgs/cross-trunk#tabs-jobs

vcunat on 11 Apr 2017

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https://github.com/DavidEGrayson/nixcrpkgs/tree/master/mingw-w64

domenkozar on 11 Apr 2017

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So it is possible (theoretically) Stack to run under Windows (with MinGW) and do use Nix package system for building dependencies under Windows for Windows?

varosi on 11 Apr 2017

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@varosi with WSL, I think it should be possible. This is something I'm interested in as well.

domenkozar on 11 Apr 2017

👎4 👍4

@midipix may be another option.
But... it may be better if we can go NATIVE, i.e., no dependency, no framework.

be5invis on 15 Apr 2017

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@domenkozar I do not think that using WSL is "under Windows".

be5invis on 28 Apr 2017

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Has anyone ever been able to build Nix itself through MinGW? I would be interested in seeing if anything works. Multi-user stuff is pretty reliant on POSIX things but the basic Nix commands are pretty straightforward C++. I'm sure the filesystem would struggle though.