Third-party C libraries policy?

[Duncan Coutts]

On Fri, 2009-05-01 at 04:19 +0000, Mikhail Glushenkov wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Currently, glut32.dll is not bundled with the Windows installer,
> though it probably should be. I vaguely remember that it is not
> part of the base XP install (though I have glut32.dll in
> WINDOWS\system32 for some reason). The question is, where should
> we put it? Touching WINDOWS\system32 (and installing a DLL
> system-wide in general) is not very good behaviour (the main
> cause of the "DLL Hell"); if we use $GHC_DIR, it'll work only
> with GHCi, but not with the standalone executables.

Right, it doesn't come with XP by default. I guess it comes with most
graphics cards's drivers.

Does the existing ghc installer install glut32.dll?

> In general, what is the policy on third-party C libraries such as
> GLUT and OpenAL? Should we bundle them with the Haskell Platform
> installer or let the user search for them on her own?

I'm not sure yet. Ideally we bundle them but dlls are a particular
problem for Windows because currently there's nowhere sensible to put
them where they will be found by programs that users compile themselves.
Supporting isolated assemblies might make it better (though they can
only be installed by admin).

Duncan