[Haskell-cafe] Order of arguments to GCC when building SDL on Windows with Cabal

[JP Moresmau]

Hello, I've been trying for a while to build the SDL haskell library
on windows. People have told me it worked for them, but I can't get to
work for the life of me. I have the latest Haskell Platform, I think
more or less the latest MINGW and MSYS tools. I'm on Windows 7 64
bits. I installed the SDL library without hassle, and the samples
work. It's only the haskell library that's bothering me. I've modified
the .cabal file as indicated for Windows (extra-include-dirs,
extra-lib-dirs), and runhaskell Setup configure. But then runhaskell
Setup build fails with:

Preprocessing library SDL-0.5.9...
dist\build\Graphics\UI\SDL\General_hsc_make.o:General_hsc_make.c:(.text
+0x29): m
ultiple definition of `main'
d:/dev/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/../../../
libmingw32.a(main.o):main.c:(
.text+0x0): first defined here
D:\dev\SDL-1.2.14\lib/libSDLmain.a(SDL_win32_main.o): In function
`console_main'
:
/Users/hercules/trunk/SDL-1.2/./src/main/win32/SDL_win32_main.c:315:
undefined r
eference to `SDL_main'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
linking dist\build\Graphics\UI\SDL\General_hsc_make.o failed
command was: d:\dev\MinGW\bin\gcc.exe -LD:\dev\SDL-1.2.14\lib -L/usr/
lib -lmingw
32 -lSDLmain -lSDL -mwindows -LD:\dev\haskell\HaskellPlatform
\2010.1.0.0\base-4.
2.0.0 -lwsock32 -luser32 -lshell32 -LD:\dev\haskell\HaskellPlatform
\2010.1.0.0\i
nteger-gmp-0.2.0.0 -LD:\dev\haskell\HaskellPlatform\2010.1.0.0\ghc-
prim-0.2.0.0
-LD:\dev\haskell\HaskellPlatform\2010.1.0.0 -LD:\dev\haskell
\HaskellPlatform\201
0.1.0.0/gcc-lib -lm -lwsock32 -LD:\dev\haskell\HaskellPlatform
\2010.1.0.0 dist\b
uild\Graphics\UI\SDL\General_hsc_make.o -o dist\build\Graphics\UI\SDL
\General_hs
c_make.exe

(I have the same error with the gcc inside the Haskell Platform, the
same error running in a windows shell without MSYS on the path, in the
MSYS bash with MSYS on the path).

And I figured out what's wrong with that line after thinking for a
while (as in, several days...): basically the line says something like
gcc sdl-flags file.o -o file.exe. If I revert the order of the
arguments and run gcc file.o -o file.exe sdl-flags, it works! The gcc
documentation explains that the libraries are searched in the order
they appear (http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Link-Options.html), so
to put the libraries you depend on after the code that has the
dependencies. And I can see that building the SDL samples indeed puts
the .c file before the sdl linker flags. So this seems to be my
problem. What's the solution?
1. I've done something stupid or forgot some essential MINGW tool that
would make my system not dependent on the order of the arguments to
gcc? I've tried with gcc 3.4.5 and gcc 4.5.0, same result.
2. I can hack somewhere (where???) the command passed on to GCC when
building? Maybe some voodoo in the cabal file?
3. I can get runhaskell Setup build to only dump the commands it's
going to run, modify them in my favorite text editor and run them
manually (as said above, I've managed to create the first exe required
but build insists on rebuilding it even if present)
4. ...?

The fact that some people managed seem to point with a problem with my
config, but it's seems reasonnably clean to me, and I've even managed
to install wxWidgets and wxHaskell...

Any help appreciated!

-- 
JP Moresmau
http://jpmoresmau.blogspot.com/