Dynamic libraries by default and GHC 7.8

[Simon Marlow]

On 27/11/12 14:52, Ian Lynagh wrote:
> GHC HEAD now has support for using dynamic libraries by default (and in
> particular, using dynamic libraries and the system linker in GHCi) for a
> number of platforms.
>
> This has some advantages and some disadvantages, so we need to make a
> decision about what we want to do in GHC 7.8. There are also some policy
> questions we need to answer about how Cabal will work with a GHC that
> uses dynamic libraries by default. We would like to make these as soon
> as possible, so that GHC 7.6.2 can ship with a Cabal that works
> correctly.
>
> The various issues are described in a wiki page here:
>      http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/DynamicByDefault
>
> If you have a few minutes to read it then we'd be glad to hear your
> feedback, to help us in making our decisions

It's hard to know what the best course of action is, because all the 
options have downsides.

Current situation:
  * fast code and compiler
  * but there are bugs in GHCi that are hard to fix, and an ongoing
    maintenance problem (the RTS linker).
  * binaries are not broken by library updates

Switching to dynamic:
  * slower code and compiler (by varying amounts depending
    on the platform)
  * but several bugs in GHCi are fixed, no RTS linker needed
  * binaries can be broken by library updates
  * can't do it on Windows (as far as we know)

Perhaps we should look again at the option that we discarded: making 
-static the default, and require a special option to build objects for 
use in GHCi.  If we also build packages both static+dynamic at the same 
time in Cabal, this might be a good compromise.

Static by default, GHCi is dynamic:
  * fast code and compiler
  * GHCi bugs are fixed, no maintenance problems
  * binaries not broken by library updates
  * we have to build packages twice in Cabal (but can improve GHC to
    emit both objects from a single compilation)
  * BUT, objects built with 'ghc -c' cannot be loaded into GHCi unless
    also built with -dynamic.
  * still can't do this on Windows

Cheers,
	Simon