[Haskell] base libraries

[Duncan Coutts]

On Thu, 2006-11-23 at 19:15 +0100, Benjamin Franksen wrote:
> Neil Mitchell wrote:
> >> In the improbable case that Haskell compiler has been installed without
> >> some basic libraries, I think it would be okay if ghc build would
> >> complain that it needs library X or Y. It should say from where these can
> >> be downloaded and the installation should be straight forward.
> > 
> > That's not the job of GHC, that's the job of Cabal. And if the
> > libraries to run Cabal are not present, then what happens?
> 
> This would be bad. Of course there must be some core libraries that have to
> be shipped with the compiler. Cabal and anything that cabal needs to run is
> definitely a must-have.

Sadly this may be rather expansive. Building software is not a simple
task. If we include cabal-get too then that pulls in networking, http,
and if we want to do security properly a bit of crypto too.

> What I am arguing for (and Bulat, if I understand him correctly) is
> that it's ok if building the _compiler itself_ (or profiler or
> whatever else (apart from some exceptions like cabal) is shipped with
> the compiler) needs libraries from outside the core library set.

Yes. I agree.

Since GHC is currently statically linked, the set of libs that are
required to build GHC need not be related to the set of libs that come
with GHC by default.

Duncan