Windows installer for Haskell Platform is very slow on adding things to PATH

[r0ml]

HaskellPlatform?-2012.4.0.0-setup.exe is very slow at adding things to PATH. It seemed to take it about 10-15 minutes to add about 5 things to PATH.* What is it doing? It did not seem to be using an unusually high amount of CPU or RAM during this time, though I wasn't watching carefully. If this behavior is expected, it would be nice if "Show Details" gave a more detailed explanation of what it's doing when adding things to path, so I don't worry that it's frozen or having problems.

My PATH, after installation, is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;D:\Program Files (x86)\Agda\2.3.0\emacs-23.4-20120219\bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\Haskell\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\Haskell Platform\2011.4.0.0\lib\extralibs\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\Haskell Platform\2011.4.0.0\bin;D:\Documents\AppData\Roaming\cabal\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\Haskell\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\Haskell Platform\2012.2.0.0\lib\extralibs\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\Haskell Platform\2012.2.0.0\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\OCaml\bin;D:\Tcl\bin;D:\OCaml\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\vim73\;D:\Python27\;D:\opt\gtk\bin;D:\opt\bin;D:\opt\bin\scan-view;D:\opt\bin\scan-build;D:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin;D:\cygwin\bin;D:\cygwin\usr\bin;D:\cygwin\sbin;D:\cygwin\usr\sbin;D:\cygwin\usr\local\bin;D:\cygwin\usr\local\sbin;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;D:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\;D:\Program Files (x86)\Asymptote;C:\Program Files (x86)\PharosSystems\Core;C:\Program Files\Broadcom\Broadcom 802.11\Driver;D:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2011b\bin;D:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Core-Static;C:\Program Files\CommonFiles\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;D:\Program Files (x86)\HaskellPlatform\2009.2.0.2\extralibs\bin;D:\Tools;D:\Program Files (x86)\Dr. Memory\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\Coq\bin;D:\Program Files\TortoiseHg\;D:\Program Files (x86)\Mercurial\;D:\Program Files (x86)\Calibre2\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Shared;C:\Users\Jason Gross\AppData\Roaming\cabal\bin;D:\Program Files (x86)\Haskell Platform\2012.4.0.0\bin

[r0ml]

I have the same problem with Haskell Platform 2013.2.0.0 setup. It installed all components and then got stuck with the last line "Target was prepended to PATH" for like 5 minutes, then another same line appeared. It's still installing now and I am not sure if it will finish. My OS is Windows 8 x64.

[r0ml]

Reproducable for me as well - at first, it happened when uninstalling a previous version of HP - very long delay (10 minutes?) between each 'target removed from PATH' message; and right now it's happening on HP 2013.2 install.

Win 7 system. Has a lot of stuff installed; but previous mentions of Haskell Platform were uninstalled before this bug occuring.

[r0ml]

I had this happen to me today. Haskell has never before been installed on this system. The system is running 64-bit Windows 7 Professional. It isn't the computer being slow, it is a fairly powerful gaming PC.

[r0ml]

Screenshot of thread stacks (from Process Explorer) when the bugs happen

[ialexryan]

This is a major issue. Is anyone working on this? Took about 20 minutes to install on a Windows 8 machine, during which the user I was observing almost gave up on the installation because they thought the installer had crashed.

[blakehawkins]

Still persists on HaskellPlatform-2014.2.0.0-x86_64-setup

Windows 7 x64

[paul-calvelage]

I had this problem today installing HaskellPlatform-7.10.3-i386-setup.exe on Windows 10 x64.

Google search led me to the original Trac bug listing (http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/ticket/222), which was from 3 years ago.

[gbaz]

@randen ideas?

[beltonzhong]

Having this problem right now with Haskell 8.0.2 on Windows 10 64-bit. This machine has never had Haskell installed. The installation completed after ~1 hour with the message "You have other/older versions of the Haskell Platform installed..."

Interesting...

[magnusjt]

Installed haskell for the first time today, and I ran into this problem. Took around 20-30 minutes to install. Then another 20-30 minutes to start the intellij-haskell plugin while it built hlint, hoogle, and whatnot. Is this just something to be expected the first time, or should I just look to use linux instead?

[gbaz]

@magnusjt this ticket is only for slowness when adding paths. Slowness when compiling is a distinct issue -- that may just be the time needed to compile a whole lot of stuff, and independent of windows. At least on some versions of ghc, it has also been reported that having particular antivirus software may drastically slow down compilation, as it scans and rescans many intermediate files from the compiler. c.f. https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2016-September/124974.html