Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Sun, 2006-07-30 at 20:02 +0100, Brian Hulley wrote: [snip]
app. When the app runs, Windows will first look in the app's directory and therefore find the correct set of DLLs.
Yes, it's fine for distributing applications but not much good for libraries.
Hi Duncan - That's true. I think I didn't catch onto the word "library" 'cause I was selfishly thinking too much about my poor unfinished app floundering helplessly in a stormy LGPL sea!!!
It's true that multiple versions of ghc could not coexist, but this already is the case at the moment: if you type "ghc" at a Windows command prompt Windows searches the one and only PATH variable to locate it so you can't have more than one version in any case, unless you create multiple user accounts and modify the user's PATH variables to point to the various versions of ghc.
I use several versions of GHC at once on windows and switch between them in a console window just by doing: set PATH=...
I hadn't thought of that (though I haven't used multiple versions of ghc at once yet).
Shared components are a bad idea imho because it's almost certain that someone elses's app would use a different version of a DLL - this is where real DLL Hell comes in! (and probably why .NET abandoned DLLs and (raw) COM in favour of assemblies)
They are pretty inevitable if you want to distribute Haskell libraries rather than applications. [snip]
I am very interested at John Skaller's suggestion about assemblies. I will have to look into it. It certainly can't be worse than the current situation! :-)
Absolutely - shared DLLs are an absolute nightmare (I became totally infamous at my last paid employment for introducing them to the workplace!!!) ANYTHING is better :-) Best regards, Brian -- Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose. Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past, congealed in the present in unthought forms, strive mightily unseen to destroy us. http://www.metamilk.com