[Haskell-cafe] Creating DLLs with GHC

[SevenThunders]

Jason Dagit wrote:
> 
> On 9/27/06, SevenThunders <mattcbro at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
>> Does cabal really work on windows?
> 
> I've never had a problem with cabal on windows.  I use it instead of
> makefiles and I'm reasonably happy with it.
> 
>> Although it's installed I notice that
>> when I try to build my library using it, it dies on the first foreign
>> import
>> statement in the first .hs source it tries to compile. It is reminiscent
>> of
>> trying to import a foreign C module directly ghci.  ghc.exe, on the other
>> hand has no problem with it.
> 
> Perhaps your .cabal file is not correct or your cabal version is too
> old?  It's very hard to say without detailed error messages and a
> clear description of what you're doing (with sample code).
> 
>> Does this scheme address the problem of being unable to link external C
>> libraries (a DLL) into the Haskell DLL?  Are there any other workarounds
>> here?
> 
> I only create a DLL from haskell and link that in a C++ application.
> I haven't tried the other way.  Probably over the next month or so the
> DLL I'm creating in Haskell will need to access an existing DLL.
> Hopefully this will work fine.
> 
>> Is it possible to create static link libraries compatible with MS
>> VC++?  Ultimately I'm trying to link my C code with Matlab.  The C code
>> stub
>> will then call a bunch of Haskell routines.
> 
> I have no idea.  I'm fairly new to using Haskell in windows.
> 
> Jason
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> 
> 

Actually I've had no problems linking external C DLLs into Haskell.  I
suspect that I can even create Haskell DLLs provided I'm not also externally
linking a C library.  The problem appears to be doing both at the same time. 
That is creating a DLL from Haskell source that also links to an external
DLL.  Right now it seems that something strange is happening with the
linker.

I have this statement approximately
ghc --mk-dll -fglasgow-exts -fffi -o netsim.dll ExternLib.o ExternLib_stub.o
dllNet.o src1.o src1_stub.o src2.o -package parsec -optl-lmatrixstack
-optl-L"." 

matrixstack.lib was created with dlltool.exe on windows so it should be gcc
compliant.  Now I've tried the following variations with the -optl-l
argument.

-optl-lcheese

compiler doesn't complain about the cheese library not existing (matrixlib
links still unresolved of course).  This is a bad sign.

-lmatrixstack 

compiler complains that matrixstack doesn't exist.  This is true even if I
create 
libmatrixstack.a
matrixstack.a
libmatrixstack.lib
matrixstack.lib

If I add a -L"." argument (instead of optl-L) I get the same behavior as the
original case.  No complaints about not finding matrixstack.lib, but a bunch
of unresolved references from this library.  In the latter case, however a
-lcheese argument does result in an error saying it can't find cheese.

 Keep in mind that compiling the standalone executable (without the --mk-dll
flag) works just fine with the original  -optl  options linking to the
matrixstack.lib library.
Could this be a bug with my version of ghc 6.5, or perhaps a known issue?

There is some statement about not being able to create multiple DLLs for a
single project.  Am I running up against such an issue?  This would be
surprising since presumably the compiled C code in the static library
matrixstack.lib performs the external DLL access independent from what
Haskell is doing.
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