bignums, gmp, bytestring, .. ?

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

> - do all those who want to distribute binaries, but not dynamically
>     linked, need bignums?
> - it would be nice to know just how far off a good haskell version
>     would be performance-wise..
> - what would be a killer for numerical programming, might still be
>     quite acceptable for a substantial part of haskell uses?

One advantage you probably haven't thought of is the size of the
binary. Currently GMP adds about 50Kb on to the Yhc runtime, for what
in the most cases is probably an occasional addition. If the bytecode
for a bignum library was less than this then there could be a
substantial size saving.

(Of course, Yhc has absolutely no license issues with libgmp, and
would have substantially worse performance than GHC at bignum
optimisation)

Thanks

Neil