I've put up a new InstallShield for GHC 4.08.1 (Windows edition). This no longer contains DLLs and import libraries for the libraries, so you have to use the compiler with -static.
Hmm ... That's really a fundamental change in GHC's Windows edition.
I intend to stick to this scheme in future releases (probably replacing -static with -dynamic
Good idea! :-) I also regard statically linking as more common than dynamically linking, so I welcome your idea to make statically linking the default.
), as GHC derives few benefits from DLLized libraries, and a lot of disadvantages. Also, there is at present an unresolved and deep-seated bug (possibly not even in GHC) that prevents some very simple DLLized programs from working.
When may Win users expect this bug to be fixed? (A difficult question, I know.) Although I regard statically linking as much more important than the DLLized alternative, dynamically linking is (was?) an important feature of GHC for Win - f.e. to safe space when distributing a bunch of EXEs / DLLs build with GHC.
Users of DLLs need not despair: one important (and, to the best of my knowledge, fully working) version of DLL building remains: you can still build static DLLs, that is, DLLs in which all the code has been compiled statically, so that all the necessary library code is linked into the DLL. Hence, you can still build DLLs to be called from other languages, or to be wrapped up as COM components, or whatever.
Exposing Haskell functions to other languages in DLLs is a very, very important feature of GHC's Win edition! Please go on supporting it as you do!!
Finally, one nice side effect is that the size of the distribution is nearly halved: it now weighs in at a little over 12Mb.
Cheers, Christian