I still don't understand the dynamic library stuff related to "fname". Is it a hint for a compiler to link against a given library? Any compiler surely has some kind of option/pragma for this already. What should it mean when there is a corresponding static lib, but not a dynamic one? Most of the time one doesn't really care about this. What should it mean for an interpreter? dlopen-ing? How should the condition

"... if the external entity has to be obtained from a dynamically loaded library ..."

be implemented, i.e. when does "fname" simply denote the header to #include and when does it denote something related to a DLL? It looks like mixing two unrelated concepts here.

I thought we agreed to remove the specification of libraries from the FFI, and leave it to some compiler-dependent mechanism. As Sven points out, there are going to be times when you really don't want a library at all, or in any case not one with the same name as the header file, and there will be cases where you want several libraries in some system-dependent order that shouldn't be placed in the source code. GHC already has such a mechanism: the package system, and additionally using fname as a library spec would make our lives somewhat harder. I suggest just deleting the sentence "Moreover ... may be made." on page 6. Cheers, Simon