[Haskell-cafe] Re: Creating static libraries using GHC

[Simon Marlow]

Tom Hawkins wrote:
> I have a chunk of Haskell code I would like wrap up and distribute as
> a library.  Is there a way to build a static library (*.a) that
> includes my code plus the Haskell runtime, which C programs can easily
> link against?  Here is what I have tried so far...
> 
> ghc --make -fffi MyLib   # Builds MyLib.o and MyLib_stub.o.
> gcc -c -I/usr/local/lib/ghc-6.4.1/include MyLibWrapper.c
> ar -r libMyLib.a MyLib.o MyLib_stub.o MyLibWrapper.o
> 
> This works fine when I use ghc to compile and link a C program...
> 
> ghc main.c libMyLib.a
> 
> But if I use gcc, it throws a lot of unresolved references.  I have no
> problem compiling with ghc, but the folks using my library probably
> won't have it installed.
> 
> I added -v to ghc to see how it calls gcc; it seems to link in
> different libraries based on what Haskell libraries are being used,
> and it undefines a bunch is symbol references.  Are there any switches
> to have ghc return a single archive with everything included?

No switches, I'm afraid.  You'll need to include the complete contents 
of libHSrts.a, and whatever packages you're using: probably at least 
base and haskell98, i.e. libHSbase.a and libHShasekll98.a respectively. 
  I don't know if you can include the contents of a .a file directly 
when building another .a file, if not you'll need to unpack these 
archives and include their contents when building your archive.

Cheers,
	Simon