Re: guile-2.0 on mingw: the sequel

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 22:25:02 +0200
> From: Panicz Maciej Godek <address@hidden>
> 
> I managed to go through the compilation process,
> and (after modifying meta/Makefile.am according to Eli's
> patch) to make install.

This compilation process includes compiling all the Scheme files that
come with Guile.  Since you say it succeeded, I don't understand what
you say later, see below.  Do you see a lot of *.go files in the
directory where you built Guile?

> When I ran guile-2.0, I got the following message:
> ===
> Throw without catch before boot:
> Throw to key misc-error with args ("primitive-load-path" "Unable to find
> file ~S in load path" ("ice-9/boot-9") #f)Aborting.

This seems to say that Guile cannot find its Scheme files.

> Supplying GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/usr/share/guile/2.0 explicitly
> helped a little

If that helped to avoid the failure to load, you probably didn't
specify a correct --prefix at configure time, or your "make install"
somehow didn't DTRT.

> but only during the first run -- it compiled some files from that
> directory and proceeded to the prompt.

This is what I don't understand: which files it needed to compile, and
why?  The compilation of Scheme files is part of the build process,
which you say you ran successfully to completion.  What am I missing?

> The Windows environment doesn't seem to be particularly
> developer-friendly (or maybe I just don't know the right
> tools)

Which developer-friendly features do you lack?  Perhaps it's a matter
of installing or configuring what is already available out there.

> but I'd truly appreciate some help.

Let's start with the basics.  Please describe:

 . Which build of what version of the GC library did you use, and
   where did you get the Windows build of that library?  Likewise for
   other build dependencies, like libunistring, libiconv, etc. --
   please tell where you got each one of them.

 . How did you configure Guile?  If you used any --prefix argument,
   please tell to which Windows directory does that prefix map on your
   system?

 . Did you see any warning or error messages during the build, and if
   so, please show them.

 . Did you see all the Scheme files being byte-compiled?

 . What command(s) did you use to install the built Guile?

 . How do you run Guile after installing it?  In particular, do you
   run it from the MSYS Bash or from the Windows cmd window?

IOW, you didn't tell enough details about the build and the usage to
be able to guess what possible problems could be in your way.

FWIW, I've successfully ran Guile from the Windows prompt after
building it, and successfully built GNU Make with Guile support.  So
it's definitely possible to do that with MinGW.