[m-dev.] [m-users.] Closed source Mercury projects on Windows

[Julien Fischer]

Hi Mark,

On Sat, 9 Jun 2018, Mark Brown wrote:

>> I suspect the only user may be the MSVC port; my Windows machine is at
>> work, so I can't check until tomorrow.  *If* we do need to include it
>> then we can replace the GNU implementation with the NetBSD one.
>
> Have you had a chance to look into this?

The getopt thing? Not yet, although I did bring my Windows machine
home with me, so I'll try to get around to it this weekend.

> Is the plan to replace readline with editline, or should I try to
> document in COPYING.LIB the need to configure without readline?

I've been looking into the editline stuff -- my recent fixes to some of
the debugger tests cases were motivated by testing it.  Editline is not
as extensive as readline, so even if we do support it, readline will be
the preferred option (i.e. the default).

COPYING.LIB doesn't need to modified IMO; there's already a file named
LICENSE that summarizes the licensing of Mercury and third
party components used by Mercury.  That would a more suitable place for
a note about the licensing implications of readline.  (That file also
needs to be updated to mention the linking exception on the Mercury
libraries if you haven't done so already.)

Julien.