DLLs not documented consistently

[Orphi]

Currently half of the GHC 7.0.1 User Guide claims that dynamic linking works on Windows now, and the other half of the User Guide still claims that it doesn't work.

That's the general problem. Now here is the hard data:

* Section 1.5.4: Correctly status that DLLs work now.

* Section 4.12 (top): Incorrectly claims that you can't build packages as DLLs.

* Section 4.12.4: Describes how dynamic libraries are searched for, but only for Unix and Mac OS. It mentions that Windows is the third alternative, but omits actually describing it.

* Section 11.6 (top): Incorrectly claims that you can't build packages as DLLs. (The rest of this section talks about building DLLs callable from other languages, which is presumably still correct.)

I believe this list is complete, but I may be wrong.

[Orphi]

PS. Section 4.12.4 says that -dynload has 3 modes: "sysdep" and "deploy". Unless I'm mistaken, that's actually two modes, not three. (I don't know whether there's a mode missing from the documentation, or somebody just typed "three" by mistake...)

[Orphi]

I've got a GHC source repository on my PC and I've fixed the User Guide. I just need to work out how to pull a patch out of Darcs. Hopefully tomorrow...

[Orphi]

My documentation updates.

[Orphi]

Assuming I did this right, I've attached a Darcs patch that fixes the inconsistencies in the User Guide. (Section 4.12.4 still has two modes but claims there are three; somebody else will have to fix that.)

Let me know what you think...

[simonmar]

Thanks for the patch! We'll review, and try to get it into 7.0.2.

[Orphi]

Just a small additional note: It appears that fixing trac #4275 involved removing a -dynload wrapper option. This is presumably the phantom third option that 4.12.4 still refers to. If somebody wants to correct the "three" to "two" while they're in there...

[duncan]

Thanks Orphi. I've applied your changes plus a bit of extra editing to both ghc-7.0.x and ghc head branches.

Tue May 17 16:31:11 BST 2011  Duncan Coutts <duncan@well-typed.com>
  * FIX #4825: Update User Guide info on DLLs.
  Original patch by Orphi <MathematicalOrchid@hotmail.com>
  Plus a few miscellaneous updates from me.