Hi
* Depend on win32 - plenty of users won't have this installed (since its no longer bundled by default)
It's not? Ok, I'm a bit surprised.
MinHugs doesn't have it, the intention is to distribute GHC with less stuff, so I doubt it will be included for much longer by default.
* Depend on FFI - most WinHugs users won't have C installed
So WinHugs isn't going to support the FFI spec? It's not clear that you need a C compiler to support the FFI. Python and GHC can compile without a C compiler and still do FFI.
WinHugs indeed doesn't support the FFI spec unless you separately install a C compiler. You can use FFI libraries that have already been compiled, but not create new ones. GHC does this by bundling a full copy of GCC on Windows. Python does a similar thing to Yhc by doing wrapper less FFI - Hugs might be able to do that, but it currently doesn't, and would be a lot of work.
It's not something that people would really like to put into base because it's not portable. There really is no equivalent to GetModuleFileName in Unix (indeed deliberately so because you can delete the binary while the program is still running).
That doesn't stop people shoving in things that are Posix only :)
I don't see a good solution apart from the current FFI solution.
The only alternative solution I can come up with is to make a Hugs primitive on Windows, and then if you are compiling via Hugs on Windows the Paths thing can be done without FFI. Any other thoughts? Thanks Neil