Has anybody been able to install Nim from source (from the Git repo) using Mingw64 under Windows 10?

[rayman22201]

I had the same issue yesterday and solved it differently.

I used Mingw from [mingw-builds (GCC 
8.1.0)](https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/Toolchains%20targetting%20Win32/Personal%20Builds/mingw-builds/installer/mingw-w64-install.exe/download)

And I used the OpenSSL, PCRE and related DLL's from Nim's website. This is a 
nice prepackaged zip archive with all the dependencies Nim needs on Windows: 
[https://nim-lang.org/download/dlls.zip](https://nim-lang.org/download/dlls.zip)

The install instructions from the Nim website **still apply** when building 
from source: 
[https://nim-lang.org/install_windows.html](https://nim-lang.org/install_windows.html)

@narimiran and @araq: There was another older [github 
issue](https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/13874) about this as well. 
Including myself, that makes at least 3 times people have had trouble figuring 
this out. It might be a good idea to add an FAQ to the github readme or 
somewhere more visible.

Has anybody been able to install Nim from source (from the Git repo) using Mingw64 under Windows 10?

[rayman22201]

@Araq, it's not about stupid. it's about you being too familiar You have 
too look at it from the point of view of a new user.

A person who goes to github to build from source is not going to necessarily go 
the download page on the main website. Why would they? They don't want the 
official release, they want to build from source...and they definitely aren't 
going to read a random github issue from months ago in which you state, "cygwin 
is not supported." Tell me, where else do you state cygwin is not supported? I 
don't see it on the github wiki either... I only found it because I happen to 
have experience. Github issues are not documentation.

Sometimes good documenation must be redundant.

Has anybody been able to install Nim from source (from the Git repo) using Mingw64 under Windows 10?

[rayman22201]

@araq, also, You like to talk about empirical evidence. 3 isn't a huge number 
of cases, but given the size of the Nim community, it's way more statistically 
significant than a single isolated case.

That's pretty strong evidence that the docs are broken for this case imo.

Has anybody been able to install Nim from source (from the Git repo) using Mingw64 under Windows 10?

[rayman22201]

Ah. I see. I used "FAQ", but yes, I meant change the installation instructions. 
That's better. I'm sorry; I used incorrect wording.

Has anybody been able to install Nim from source (from the Git repo) using Mingw64 under Windows 10?

[rayman22201]

> But yeah, I am not fan of documenting all the unsupported ways of installing 
> Nim because that's impossible. Why would Cygwin be supported? We also don't 
> support DJGPP on DOSBox.

Cygwin is much more commonly used on Windows than either of those (by a large 
margin.)

Your approach is too rigid.

Obviously you can't document all possible unsupported setups. I'm not 
suggesting that. I am suggesting that you should account for the common 
mistakes (especially when presented with empirical evidence that a mistake is 
common.)

Has anybody been able to install Nim from source (from the Git repo) using Mingw64 under Windows 10?

[rayman22201]

I'm only saying the instructions need to be fixed. I am not suggesting any 
solution. Talking about "what not to do" may be the wrong way to fix it. The 
right way to fix it is probably to just make the "right way" more clear...

Has anybody been able to install Nim from source (from the Git repo) using Mingw64 under Windows 10?

[rayman22201]

lol. I didn't mean to start a fight. I think this is an easy fix. I will try to 
PR something soon. Thanks Araq!

Blog post about strict funcs

[rayman22201]

This is brilliant! excellent work @Araq and @Clyyber!

I have a question about the error message. Does it currently just look like the 
below sample? 


Error: 'p' can have side effects
an object reachable from 'n' is potentially mutated


Run

Can the error message be expanded to show you the alias chain that lead to the 
mutation? The thing about aliases in particular is that even if the compiler 
finds the bug through the graph analysis, the programmer is not always so 
smart. It may not be obvious to my silly monkey brain when just looking at the 
line that triggered the error :-P

System Programming in 2k20

[rayman22201]

The OP obviously has an existing agenda, and an extreme bias. It does not read 
like objective critique, and the tone is over confident, to put it mildly.

> Claiming that one is required to have practical experience in a technology in 
> order to judge it is simply a gatekeeping because if I change my mind, it 
> would then mean either initially poor documentation or emotional bias after 
> use.

I never rode a bicycle before, but I read all about riding bicycles, so I am an 
expert bicycle rider now? No matter how good docs are, you cannot say docs are 
sufficient to understand something. You need both...

@mratsim easily addressed all of your criticisms of the language in his post, 
so I won't repeat that here, except to add a few things.

> Come on, isn't it the same thing about still having to write C/C++?

You want to allow inline assembly in your language, but you are criticizing 
inline C/C++? That seems...arbitrary. Nim allows both btw

> Nim is similar to Python and other higher-level languages with FFI.

This statement just comes off as naive. You took a quick look and dismissed the 
capabilities out of hand.

Wrapping a C library for Python and wrapping it for Nim are extremely different 
experiences. Nim doesn't have a big runtime that requires management like those 
languages, the FFI is much better than those languages, and macros allow you to 
refine it even more (by refine I mean make both safer and more ergonomic).

I would like more built in pragmas for alignment, but it's honestly a very 
minor wish. Again, as mratsim shows, it can be easily worked around. It's no 
different than having to write some small inline assembly in places.

> I also do not understand why you pitched Nim's application in cryptography to 
> me.

Because the biggest and most successful application written in Nim (other than 
the compiler itself) is a a crypto applicaiton Status. Which continues to 
invest in Nim. If a successful application actually running in production by a 
company isn't obvious to you as a measure of success, what is success to you? 
Really smart people chose Nim for this domain. They chose Nim for a reason, 
it's well suited for this task.

I could also point out there are other languages in this domain that the OP 
seems to have either ignored or is not aware of (which means they didn't do 
very good research, and shows again that they are biased.) Have you been to the 
[Handmade Network](https://handmade.network/manifesto)? There is Odin, D, 
Jai Other very smart people are working on these problems today. If you 
want to try your own attempt, that's great, good luck, but ignore all these 
other efforts at your own peril.

The difficult problem of paying for open source is important, and your 
"Source-On-Demand" idea is interesting, though I have much reservations about 
it. No offense, but smarter and wiser people than you have spent years trying 
to solve this problem without success. Read [The Cathedral and the 
Bazaar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar). That being 
said, world changing ideas sometimes come from determined upstarts.

Even your responses here are over confident. It's hard to take you seriously 
when you are so confident that you can't seem to accept criticism of yourself. 
You are so convinced of your own solution, then why are you here? The more I 
read your writing, the more I think you are just trolling.

So I say good luck! Don't let the door hit you on the way out...

Nim spotted in the wild on new Hacker News code education startup

[rayman22201]

I was pleasantly surprised to see Nim as a supported language on this site! 
 (HN thread: 
)

Donation matching drive via HN

[rayman22201]

Cheers! Good times for Nim <3

50$ USD

[https://opencollective.com/nim/donate/success?OrderId=8k03reyd-5agmq5ew-n4gqlbwo-z7j4nxv9&email=rayimber%40gmail.com](https://opencollective.com/nim/donate/success?OrderId=8k03reyd-5agmq5ew-n4gqlbwo-z7j4nxv9&email=rayimber%40gmail.com)

Donation matching drive via HN

[rayman22201]

I have been a recurring donor for a long time, and ended up going open 
collective despite the fees. I remember asking @araq a similar question a while 
ago. I don't remember the exact answer.

IIRC the main reason that is the top donation option is because it provides 
some non-profit organization like benefits without many of the legal, 
accounting, and management costs of running a non-profit.

For example, It provides a publicly auditable corporate bank account and 
expense reporting, as well as proper tax documents for donors for many 
countries.

This is from memory, so anybody with more up to date knowledge feel free to 
correct me.

Given the current influx of donation money, the Nim Foundation may get off the 
ground, in which case I suspect Nim will move away from Open Collective and use 
different mechanisms.

Of course I will gladly switch to that, or what ever the core devs think is 
best.