id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	resolution	keywords	cc	os	architecture	failure	difficulty	testcase	blockedby	blocking	related
4287	GHC command invocation debug output not in correct format for cmd.exe	ezyang		"A frequent operation when debugging a misbehaving GHC build is manually performing an invocation that GHC made to some external process. To aid this, -v3 prints out the command that GHC invoked.

Ideally, we would like to be able to copy paste this printed command to our terminal and have it work correctly (with temporary files kept and such.) However, the output for Windows is quite misleading. Consider the following command:

{{{
C:\Program Files\Haskell Platform\2010.2.0.0\lib\..\mingw\bin\windres --preprocessor=""C:\Program Files\Haskell Platform\2010.2.0.0\lib\..\mingw\bin\gcc"" ""-E"" ""-xc"" ""-DRC_INVOKED"" --use-temp-file --input=C:\Users\ezyang\ghc672_0\ghc672_0.rc --output=C:\Users\ezyang\ghc672_0\ghc672_0.o --output-format=coff
}}}

The primary problem is that arguments are not escaped or quoted. This is seen in the executable path in this command, which has a space in it.

This is a major usability bug when command line arguments contain argments in them. For example, -E is meant as a flag to gcc, not windres. However, the printed command line is quite misleading.

This should be relatively easy to fix."	bug	closed	normal		Compiler	6.12.3	fixed			Windows	Unknown/Multiple	None/Unknown