Michael,
- How to generate an import library at all? Check this out: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/FAQ#How_do_I_link_Haskell_with_C.2B.2...
- Assuming I have obtained an import library, how to use in the Microsoft world, i.e. how to bridge the gap from .a to .lib? See above.
- Is Visual Studio 7 able to process the header files included from the stub header files generated by ghc? Visual Studio 6 has a lot of problems, e.g. it knows nothing about the type long long. I could not make Visual Studio 7 understand those, but I didn't try really hard.
- Didn't you have problems with mangled names? Haskell would not understand mangled names. You have to declare the Haskell functions as extern "C" in the C++ code.
This, of course, does not count for functions that are passed to/from Haskell via a function pointer.
- What is the principal difference between using the import library and writing one on my own? Does the import library do anything else than loading the library and delegating the calls? I don't know :(
Just one more piece of advice: if you can compile your C++ code with gcc, you probably can link it statically to the Haskell code, thus avoiding this DLL nightmare. Hope this helps. Cheers Cyril