I'm linking with a .a file built from C; when I do this on a C program I do something like:

gcc myfile.c -o myout theafile.a

so i tried

ghc MyFile.hs -o myout -optctheafile.a

but this doesn't appear to pass the paramter. when i run with -v3 and inspect the call to gcc it doesn't include this option. if i copy that call to gcc and add it maually at the command line, everything's cool

You want the option passed when *linking*, so I think you want -optl rather than -optc. Cheers, Simon