> I just re-read the GNU Lesser General Public License today - and I
> discovered that it places some utterly strange (IMHO) restrictions on
> executables statically linked with LGPLed libraries.
> Unfortunately, GHC for Windows produces such executables by linking
> in libgmp statically. Dynamically linking with libgmp would cause no
> restrictions, but if it is statically linked, the LGPL says that
> everyone distributing a program compiled with GHC has to 'Accompany
> the work with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code
> for the Library including whatever changes were used in the work
> (which must be distributed under Sections 1 and 2 above); and, if the
> work is an executable linked with the Library, with the complete
> machine-readable "work that uses the Library", as object code and/or
> source code, so that the user can modify the Library and then relink
> to produce a modified executable containing the modified Library. (It
> is understood that the user who changes the contents of definitions
> files in the Library will not necessarily be able to recompile the
> application to use the modified definitions.)'
Yes, this is a pain. We really ought to distribute GMP as a DLL on
Windows, and stop making static versions on Unix (the Solaris
distribution of GHC generally includes a static libgmp, but most of the
other dists don't).
Better still, we could find an alternative to GMP - I don't know of one
that is as fast & provides all the functionality that we use from GMP,
though.
Cheers,
Simon
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