jwlato:
Duncan Coutts wrote:
Some are trivial and should be done away with. For example the ones that just check if a C header / lib is present are unnecessary (and typically do not work correctly). The next point release of Cabal can do these checks automatically, eg:
Configuring foo-1.0... cabal: Missing dependencies on foreign libraries: * Missing header file: foo.h * Missing C libraries: foo, bar, baz This problem can usually be solved by installing the system packages that provide these libraries (you may need the "-dev" versions). If the libraries are already installed but in a non-standard location then you can use the flags --extra-include-dirs= and --extra-lib-dirs= to specify where they are.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
For those of us who want to write cross-platform (i.e. Windows) bindings to C libraries, this is great news.
It will be important now to report the lack of uses of these portability tests back to the authors of packages. A start would be to have hackage warn, I suppose. -- Don