Simon Marlow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote,
> > [I don't know if this will be much help, but...]
> > I've had a lot of trouble trying to install GHC 4.04 under
> > Linux too, both from the binary distribution and the source one.
> > This gmp problem was fairly easy to fix, I just hunted
> > around the (source) directory tree and found that gmp is actually
> > included in the GHC distribution and that libgmp.a had been built,
> > but was just not in the right path for the linker to find it.
> > Copying that .a file into the directory where ghc was being linked
> > fixed the problem. So this looks like a problem with the Makefiles.
>
> I didn't include libgmp.a with the Linux distributions, on the grounds that
> (a) most Linux installations either come with a libgmp, or one that can be
> installed separately and (b) the system-supplied libgmp is a shared library,
> which is obviously better than providing a static one with ghc.
The problem is, I think, that GHC doesn't work with the
shared library. I noticed that when building the new rpms
for 4.04 - therefore, I explicitly checked that the static
version of the library is included in the rpms. (I don't
know why it doesn't work - I thought that this was intended
and thus didn't file a bug report.)
In most (all?) Linux distributions, static libraries are
part of the *-devel* library packages, which are not
installed unless you specify that you want a development
workstation (or install everything). As many users don't
know this, I would not recommend relying on the availability
of static libraries on Linux machines. (Unless you are
building an rpm, where you can explicitly add a dependency
on the required package.)
Cheers,
Manuel
PS: I am sorry that I never responded to your question on
how GHC can make building RPMs simpler - I just didn't
get around to it, but it is still on my todo list.
