ghc configure

[Claus Reinke]

> On Tuesday 01 May 2007 13:02, Claus Reinke wrote:
>> [...] would it be possible
>> to have a "configuration package" with nothing but the common checks? then
>> every package, and ghc itself, could depend on that package being there,
>> and every package configure could modularly use the information from that
>> package. [...]
> 
> That would be the wrong approach, autoconf already has the relevant 
> mechanisms:
> ..
> My personal opinion is: Compared to the whole build time, the configuration 
> checks are ridiculously fast, and doing arcane things to speed this up is not 
> worth the trouble.

if i recall my intentions from that time correctly;-) it was less a question of
speed, but of (a) avoiding duplication and (b) lifting the info from autoconf
and co to haskell. better autoconf caching might address (a), but not (b).

in other words, it might be nice if all haskell code, including cabal, ghc, 
libraries, .. could depend on a single platform-specific package, and if
successful installation of that package on a platform would make the
autoconf results available in the form of include-files and haskell modules.

in other words, for generic platform specifics, only that single package
would need autoconf, other library packages and haskell applications
(the majority of portable haskell code?) might be able to drop the 
autoconf dependency completely, and the remainder could at least 
focus on the platform issues specific to their function (such as OpenGL, 
OpenAL, ..). 

in yet other words, how much more useful could System.Info become?

but it was just a suggestion,
claus