[arch-haskell] Missing "dyn" libraries for possibly many packages

[gdweber at iue.edu]

Now that bauerbill is building again, I'm starting to get errors
about missing "dyn" libraries for a number of packages:

[haskell-sdl-gfx]:

    Graphics/UI/SDL/Rotozoomer.hs:19:7:
        Could not find module `Graphics.UI.SDL.Types':
          Perhaps you haven't installed the "dyn" libraries for package 
          `SDL-0.6.2'?
          Use -v to see a list of the files searched for.
        Aborting...
    ERROR: makepkg exited with an error (512)

(Having previously failed to build this because of a missing
external library, SDL_gfx, my first thought was: What -- another
missing library, SDL_dyn?  What's that?) :-)

[haskell-zip-archive]:

    Codec/Archive/Zip.hs:69:17:
        Could not find module `Data.Digest.CRC32':
          Perhaps you haven't installed the "dyn" libraries for package 
          `digest-0.0.0.8'?
          Use -v to see a list of the files searched for.
        Aborting...

Searching around, I've found a couple of other instances of this:

-   Comments on haskell-missingh:
    http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=17845
-   Comments on haskell-digest:
    http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=23078

Although these comments are automatically posted on the arch-haskell
mailing list, it's easy to overlook them because their subjects
refer to specific packages -- since I'm not interested in missingh
or digest, I deleted them without reading, and probably many others
did too.  

So, to consolidate the information here, I'll repost peti's advice
on the haskell-digest package:

Comment by: peti on Sun, 26 Dec 2010 15:19:40 +0000

    Hi Frabjous, apparently, you are using the "haskell-bytestring"
    package from AUR. That package is kind of obsolete, because it
    became a part of GHC in version 6.12.3 or so. You probably
    installed it a while ago, before 6.12.3 was available? Anyway,
    this is no big deal, and the problem with the missing shared
    libraries that caused your build failure has been fixed. Still, I
    would recommend that you clean up your Haskell installation to
    make sure that everything conforms to the current state of the
    art. The best way to accomlish that is to run the commands "pacman
    -R --cascade ghc", then "rm -rf /usr/lib/ghc-*", and then to
    re-install everything that you actually need from scratch. It's
    optional to do that, of course. In any case, thanks for the bug
    report. I'm glad the problem is now fixed.

I do wonder, though, about a few things.
1.  Why the dyn libraries are now needed.
    Is it because of a new version of GHC which does this by default?
    Or a change in the way Arch Haskell defines packages?
2.  Does it still build static libraries as well?
3.  If I build an executable program, without any special flags,
    is it going to use the dynamic or static libraries?
4.  Is it possible for users to control whether dynamic or static
    libraries are built, or both, using tools such as bauerbill?

-- 
   ___   ___  __     _      
  / _ \ / _ \| |    | |     Gregory D. Weber, Associate Professor
 / /_\// / | | | /\ | |     Indiana University East
/ /_\\/ /__| | |/  \| |     http://mypage.iu.edu/~gdweber/
\____/\_____/\___/\__/      Tel. (765) 973-8420; FAX (765) 973-8550