Which unix compatibility toolchain to use with cabal install on windows?

Question

trying to install BlogLiterately on win7/64.

• installed HP 2014.2/64
• cabal update
• cabal install cabal-install
• renamed C:\\Program Files\\Haskell Platform\\2014.2.0.0\\lib\\extralibs\\bin\\cabal.exe to *.old
• cabal update
• cabal install BlogLiterately fails cuz needs unix toolchain to install new version of network
• tried installing mingw , but gave up cuz the package manager that pops up only lists packages with suffix 32 , i want 64 , can't tell from http://www.mingw.org/ if it supports 64 bit.
• tried installing cygwin64 , added C:\\cygwin64\\bin to the end of PATH , didn't work, see on internet that people think cygwin doesn't work for ghc so well anymore, even though the original error said cygwin would work
• found http://msys2.github.io/ , installed it, followed instructions to update with pacman on that page, used Win64 Shell
• got error that HsOpenSSL is missing c libs eay32 ssl32 , googling says to install http://slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html then cabal install HsOpenSSL --extra-include-dirs="c:/OpenSSL-Win64/include" --extra-lib-dirs="c:/OpenSSL-Win64" -- this works, but can't find any official looking docs saying i need Win32OpenSSL -- why can't cabal install this for me?
• now cabal install BlogLiterately fails cuz ghc.exe: unable to load package 'hs-bibutils-5.5'

the error:

ghc.exe: warning: _stricmp from msvcrt is linked instead of __imp__stricmp
ghc.exe: warning: _stricmp from msvcrt is linked instead of __imp__stricmp
ghc.exe: warning: _atoi64 from msvcrt is linked instead of __imp__atoi64
ghc.exe: warning: toupper from msvcrt is linked instead of __imp_toupper
ghc.exe: warning: _strnicmp from msvcrt is linked instead of __imp__strnicmp
ghc.exe: C:\Users\nlab\AppData\Roaming\cabal\x86_64-windows-ghc-7.8.3\hs-bibutils-5.5\HShs-bibutils-5.5.o: unknown symbol `strdup'

cabal install hs-bibutils --reinstall --force-reinstalls succeeds, but i get the same error when retrying the BlogLiterately install. i tried moving /c/Program Files/Haskell Platform/2014.2.0.0/mingw/bin to the front of the PATH and again reinstalling hs-bibutils , same result.

what is the right way to do this?!?! which unix toolchain are we supposed to use, and how are we supposed to configure it? why isn't it enough that HP includes mingw 's binaries? gah.

Answer 1

For posterity, new versions of the Haskell Platform for windows (since 8.0.1) allow network to build properly if the cabal file is augmented with a few extra settings as described on the platform website: https://www.haskell.org/platform/

Modify your cabal config file (you can verify the location by running "cabal user-config init") to contain the following lines:
extra-prog-path: C:\Program Files\Haskell Platform\8.0.1\msys\usr\bin
extra-lib-dirs: C:\Program Files\Haskell Platform\8.0.1\mingw\lib
extra-include-dirs: C:\Program Files\Haskell Platform\8.