zlib and dependencies in general

[Don Stewart]

iainspeed:
> I've been trying to build zlib (any version) onto a Debian 5.1 machine, and had
> a few problems. I've solved these now, but one of them was a dependence on not
> only zlibc/zlib1g as you'd expect, but zlib1g-dev as well, and wasn't actually
> in any of the error messages. I ended up relying on a solution given for a
> similar problem with mySQL installation.
> 
> I noticed that Hackage only lists Haskell library dependencies - might it be an
> idea to list other non-Haskell ones, too? cabal-install won't install without
> zlib, so there's no ease of installation to rely on, and not everyone would
> have found/read the mySQL post.

The cabal file lists zlib as a dependency:

        extra-libraries: z

however, what 'z' means varies from distro to distro. Ultimately, your
package manager has to solve this.

-- Don