[ ghc-Bugs-1234458 ] Hardcoded path to perl.exe

Bugs item #1234458, was opened at 2005-07-07 22:18
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by simonpj
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Category: None
Group: 6.4
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: Hardcoded path to perl.exe

Initial Comment:
I apologize in advance for not selecting a proper
category but as I am an extreme neophyte - I didn't
know what to select.

I use GHC primarily to build Pugs (http://pugscode.org)

I got frustrated that on Win32, the current working
directory supercedes the %PATH variable and the
perl.exe in the GHC root directory was getting used
instead of my freshly installed 5.8.7

I deleted the file and corresponding perl56.dll and
everything appeared to be working fine and yet Pugs
would fail to build spitting out a cryptic 0x01 error
(not exactly sure what the code was but it wasn't helpful).

Since I had deleted the files instead of renaming them
(hindsight always being 20/20) and not wanting to
install GHC all over again just to see if for some
strange reason that was the problem - I copied over the
perl.exe and perl58.dll and what do you know - it worked.

My bug report then is this - if there is some valid
reason to hardcode a path to the GHC root directory for
perl instead of looking in %PATH as a backup plan -
then please make any error message more descriptive.

Note:  Not being very familiar with GHC, it might be
that the error message was very informative and that it
is the Pugs build process fault for not carrying it
over.  If that is the case then please disregard and
please forgive.

Cheers,
Joshua Gatcomb
a.k.a. Limbic~Region
Limbic_Region_2000@xxxxxxxxx

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>Comment By: Simon Peyton Jones (simonpj)
Date: 2005-07-11 10:56

Message:
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Can you explain why this is a problem for you? 

We consider it a feature, not a bug, that GHC invokes its own 
private copy of perl when GHC runs its own private perl 
scripts (actually, I think the only perl script is the Evil 
Mangler).  That way we aren't exposed to version skew in 
perl, nor do we require users to even have perl installed.

Why does it cause a problem for you?  Perhaps GHC's perl 
doesn't run on your box.  But I wonder why not.... The only 
script it's being asked to run is the one that comes with GHC 
itself.

Simon



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