Reilly Hayes on 2006-08-10 18:36:49 -0700:
There's one thing I don't entirely understand about the GMP problem. I understand that there are some limitations on GHC's ability to generate relocatable (and therefore dynamically linkable) code on x86 (a register allocation problem related to the mangler if I recall the comments in the code correctly). But this shouldn't prohibit linking GMP in dynamically, should it? It's just a C library and GCC should happily generate relocatable code. As a dynamically linked library, there should be no tainting issues to worry about even if the dynamically linked code is shipped with the executable.
Am I missing something?
No, the LGPL doesn't mandate source redistribution when you redistribute a binary that is dynamically linked to a LGPL-licensed library. If GHC did support dynamically linking programs, it wouldn't be an issue, but GHC only supports that on OS X. I was wondering something similar - is it really easier to replace the functionality and speed of GMP than to extend GHC's dynamic library support to other platforms?