[Haskell-cafe] Cabal, GHC, FFI and Visual Studio on Windows

[Duncan Coutts]

On Sat, 2008-02-02 at 22:33 +0000, Magnus Therning wrote:
> Duncan Coutts wrote:
> [..]
> > Just so I'm sure I understand...
> 
> Sure thing.
> 
> > Or are you just trying to link some C code statically into a haskell
> > program, but it just so happens that this C code relies on being built
> > with MS's C compiler rather than gcc.
> 
> Yes, this is exactly it.  I mean, I could probably hack the incomplete
> mingw header files to add the functions I need, but I thought it'd be
> much easier to just use Microsoft's development environment.
> 
> > Perhaps you could clarify what it is you're trying to do (the end goal,
> > just just the minutia) so we can see what feature it is that Cabal is
> > missing that would help your situation. When we figure that out we can
> > file a feature request so it is not forgotten.
> 
> The end goal is to sneak Haskell into the work place ;-)
> 
> What I'd really like to see is the ability to “drive” development
> completely from Haskell.  With that I mean to, just as on Linux, have a
> single cabal file that compiles the C code containing the wrappers while
> still having access to a complete development environment.  On Windows
> that means compiling C/C++ with MS's tool set.
> 
> I hope that clarifies what goes on in my muddy mind a bit...

Ok, so you could create a separate component to produce the .dll / .a
from the C code but you'd prefer the convenience of being able to just:
c-sources: blah.c
and have them included in the project, but built using the MS C
compiler.

So I think we should file a feature request about building C sources
using gcc/ms-c directly rather than going via ghc as that would give us
the flexibility to use alternative C compilers.

Perhaps you'd like to file it, otherwise I can.
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/

Duncan