proposal: static subpackages for executable binaries

[Jens Petersen]

Hi,

A while back I asked here about what people thought about
doing static linking of executables against Haskell libraries,
and the replies I got were basically against that.

I have been getting more requests for statically linked Bin packages
from various users so now I am thinking to add static *subpackages* for
packages with Haskell binary executable packages.

eg cabal-install-static, pandoc-static, darcs-static, hscolour-static, etc

The main base packages will still carry the default dynlinked
executable.  I will use alternatives to handle the choice
between the dyn and statically linked Haskell binaries.
(All executables will still be dynlinked against C libs
of course.)

This flexibility should make more users happy
and will make for greater portability of binaries.
eg Maybe someone wants to use latest pandoc or
cabal-install on an older release, then they
can install the static subpackage there by hand.

I think it makes most sense to start doing this
for F22 Rawhide once we move to ghc-7.8.

I have done a PoC locally for alex (since it is a smaller package)
and it seems to work so far.  So assuming it looks good
I will probably go ahead and implement this into
ghc-rpm-macros for F22 and then later cabal-rpm.

Jens