Re: gmp

Christian.Maeder:

I understand that gmp is needed for the certain libraries like the Prelude with Double and Integer.

But I do not understand why gmp is so deeply buried in the rts. Are the basic types Int and Pointer not enough to write a compiler like ghc?

Integer is a good type :) However, its buried in the rts/distributed with the runtime, so that users may optionally use that version, rather than finding and installing their own external gmp package. On almost all platforms though, the distributed-with-ghc gmp is unused. -- Don