[Haskell-cafe] Re: 1,000 packages, so let's build a few!

[John Lato]

Duncan Coutts wrote:
>
> Some are trivial and should be done away with. For example the ones that
> just check if a C header / lib is present are unnecessary (and typically
> do not work correctly). The next point release of Cabal can do these
> checks automatically, eg:
>
>        Configuring foo-1.0...
>        cabal: Missing dependencies on foreign libraries:
>        * Missing header file: foo.h
>        * Missing C libraries: foo, bar, baz
>        This problem can usually be solved by installing the system
>        packages that provide these libraries (you may need the "-dev"
>        versions). If the libraries are already installed but in a
>        non-standard location then you can use the flags
>        --extra-include-dirs= and --extra-lib-dirs= to specify where
>        they are.

Thank you!  Thank you!  Thank you!

For those of us who want to write cross-platform (i.e. Windows)
bindings to C libraries, this is great news.

John Lato