What Cabal stuff is permanent?

Duncan Coutts duncan.coutts at worc.ox.ac.uk
Tue Jun 7 09:28:46 EDT 2005


On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 08:15 -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 02:06:34PM +0100, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> > > of this library" through Cabal.
> > 
> > I suspect that any C .h files you need at build time will also be needed
> > by programs which use the library that you are building, since GHC can
> > inline FFI calls across modules in which case the client module needs
> > the .h files when compiling too. And so they should be installed along
> > with your library (assuming it is a library and not a program you're
> > building) and their location mentioned in the .cabal file.
> 
> Hmm.  I have had several cases where I haven't included these .h files,
> and things still seem to have worked OK.  I do that in MissingPy, for
> instance.  I know that WASH has a .h file that it has not traditionally
> installed.

You're probably just lucky that GHC decided not to inline the FFI
call. :-)  (and/or the client module was not being compiled -fvia-C)

You can get the definitive answer as to whether you're on thin ice from
one of the GHC devs.

Duncan



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