[GHC] #14537: Do not link to msvcrt.dll

[GHC]

#14537: Do not link to msvcrt.dll
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        Reporter:  johndoe           |                Owner:  (none)
            Type:  feature request   |               Status:  closed
        Priority:  normal            |            Milestone:
       Component:  Compiler          |              Version:  8.2.1
  (Linking)                          |
      Resolution:  invalid           |             Keywords:
Operating System:  Windows           |         Architecture:
                                     |  Unknown/Multiple
 Type of failure:  Other             |            Test Case:
      Blocked By:                    |             Blocking:
 Related Tickets:                    |  Differential Rev(s):
       Wiki Page:                    |
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Comment (by Phyx-):

 > Well, I think you do. Not only vc-redist installers, but even separate
 files, if you need. According to ​https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
 us/library/ms235299.aspx:

 Yes and how would this work? You could call `ghc foo.hs` and the resulting
 `foo.exe` would not run because the required DLLs are not on your path.
 Doing this is a major deployment issue. And you're confusing two things.
 These are the distributable files. There's not enough for the compiler.
 For the compiler you'd need the appropriate import libraries as well which
 I don't think are in those packages (I haven't checked.). The licensing
 issue comes from the fact that we don't just use them to run, we also need
 to be able to link against them. So we need to redistribute some form of
 static code.


 > But MSVCRT.DLL is not C runtime:
 ​https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140411-00/?p=1273 So
 linking to it is against MS guidance.

 The link explicitly says it's not the Visual C/C++ runtime. It is most
 definitely however a C runtime. Also I don't consider a blog post about it
 official policy. If Raymond Chen doesn't want people to link against it,
 he should provide a reasonable alternative.

 > But ok, I am not going to make holy war from it. My problem is that in
 my system MSVCRT.DLL just does not contain required exports (but
 'numbered' msvcr90.dll does)

 Then this is a bug in your application. GHC by default does not produce
 binaries that use symbols not provided by the dll. The mingw-w64 project
 goes to great lengths to make sure the import libraries for msvcrt do not
 contain symbols not available in as far back as XP. So either you hit a
 bug in their import library (which is certainly possible and has happened
 and should report it there with a repro) or the application is doing
 something weird.

 If you think it's us that are linking against a symbol that shouldn't be
 available by default, then that's a separate issue that I'm perfectly
 willing to address.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/14537#comment:4>
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