[Chicken-users] Chicken scheme installation report (mingw-msys)

[Mark Carter]

The following is an installation report of attempting to compile
chicken from git using mingw-msys on 17-Mar-2010. The topmost entry in
the git log is:
  commit 590e58d9cfaed30d1b79abcc8bab4c13b80691ce
  Author: felix <address@hidden>
  Date:   Fri Mar 12 07:51:21 2010 +0100
  same for chicken-status and chicken-uninstall
Here are the steps I followed to create chicken:
  git clone http://chicken.wiki.br/git/chicken-core.git
  cd chicken-core
  make PLATFORM=mingw-msys confclean
  make PLATFORM=mingw-msys PREFIX=/usr/local bootstrap
  make PLATFORM=mingw-msys PREFIX=/usr/local CHICKEN=./chicken-boot
  make PLATFORM=mingw-msys PREFIX=/usr/local install
During the execution of the last command, it is reported:
  Error: (directory) cannot open directory: "/usr/local/lib/chicken/5"
However, this doesn't really seem to be  a problem, because if I type:
  ls /usr/local/lib/chicken/5
I obtain the listing:
  chicken.import.so          posix.import.so           srfi-14.import.so
  csi.import.so              regex.import.so           srfi-18.import.so
  data-structures.import.so  scheme.import.so          srfi-4.import.so
  extras.import.so           setup-api.import.so       srfi-69.import.so
  files.import.so            setup-api.so              tcp.import.so
  foreign.import.so          setup-download.import.so  types.db
  irregex.import.so          setup-download.so         utils.import.so
  lolevel.import.so          srfi-1.import.so
  ports.import.so            srfi-13.import.so

The interpreter works OK. If I type:
  csi
I am greeted with the prompt:
  CHICKEN
  (c)2008-2010 The Chicken Team
  (c)2000-2007 Felix L. Winkelmann
  Version 4.4.1
  windows-mingw32-x86 [ manyargs dload ptables ]
  compiled 2010-03-17 on EMEAGBRABSLT001 (MINGW32_NT-5.1)
Compilation is problematical, though. If I have the file hello.scm:
  (write-line "chicken scheme says hello")
and type:
  csc hello.scm
I obtain the response:
  The system cannot find the path specified.
  Error: shell command terminated with non-zero exit status 1: 
  ""\usr\local\bin\chicken.exe" "hello.scm" -output-file "hello.c""
The problem is due to the use of backslashes. 
It should be noted that I am typing the commands from MSYS shell,
where forward slashes are expected. If I run csi and csc from a normal
DOS shell, then I get the same responses. In DOS, although the
backslashes are correct, the filepath isn't. It's actually in:
  C:\msys\1.0\local\bin

One philosophical problem to resolve is whether chicken development
should be done from a DOS shell, or a MSYS shell. I am inclined to say
the latter, as that is the normal development environment for MINGW.