On Mon, 2009-02-02 at 08:29 -0800, Don Stewart wrote: > 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.
Note that to get the above checks authors don't have to do anything except list the C libs in the extra-libraries field as normal. No Setup.hs code or ./configure scripts are required (though it should work with packages that do use ./configure scripts). > A start would be to have hackage warn, I suppose. I'm not quite sure what we can warn about here except the general use of configure scripts (which is not a good idea at least at the moment). We need to work out what everone is using them for first: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/482 Duncan _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe