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

[Don Stewart]

jwlato:
> 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.

It will be important now to report the lack of uses of these portability
tests back to the authors of packages.

A start would be to have hackage warn, I suppose.

-- Don