Replacement for GMP as Bignum: ARPREC? Haskell?; OS-XandOpenSSL

[Brian Hulley]

Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-07-30 at 20:02 +0100, Brian Hulley wrote:
[snip]
>> app. When the app runs, Windows will first look in the app's
>> directory and therefore find the correct set of DLLs.
>
> Yes, it's fine for distributing applications but not much good for
> libraries.

Hi Duncan -
That's true. I think I didn't catch onto the word "library" 'cause I was 
selfishly thinking too much about my poor unfinished app floundering 
helplessly in a stormy LGPL sea!!!

>
>> It's true that multiple versions of ghc could not coexist, but this
>> already is the case at the moment: if you type "ghc" at a Windows
>> command prompt Windows searches the one and only PATH variable to
>> locate it so you can't have more than one version in any case,
>> unless you create multiple user accounts and modify the user's PATH
>> variables to point to the various versions of ghc.
>
> I use several versions of GHC at once on windows and switch between
> them in a console window just by doing: set PATH=...

I hadn't thought of that (though I haven't used multiple versions of ghc at 
once yet).

>> Shared components are a bad idea imho because it's almost certain
>> that someone elses's app would use a different version of a DLL -
>> this is where real DLL Hell comes in! (and probably why .NET
>> abandoned DLLs and (raw) COM in favour of assemblies)
>
> They are pretty inevitable if you want to distribute Haskell libraries
> rather than applications.
[snip]
>
> I am very interested at John Skaller's suggestion about assemblies. I
> will have to look into it. It certainly can't be worse than the
> current situation! :-)

Absolutely - shared DLLs are an absolute nightmare (I became totally 
infamous at my last paid employment for introducing them to the 
workplace!!!) ANYTHING is better :-)

Best regards, Brian

-- 
Logic empowers us and Love gives us purpose.
Yet still phantoms restless for eras long past,
congealed in the present in unthought forms,
strive mightily unseen to destroy us.

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