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

[Mark Brown]

On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 4:38 PM, Mark Brown <mark at mercurylang.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 5:46 AM, Julien Fischer <jfischer at opturion.com> wrote:
>>
>> 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.)
>
> Diff for that last point is attached. I think I'll leave off trying to
> document the implications configuring with readline for now, since the
> change hasn't made any claims about how programs can be distributed
> anyway.
>
> I wonder if we could add a configure option like
> `--enable-closed-source-distribution` which disables configuration of
> anything, like readline, that may impede distribution of closed-source
> binaries? That would also help ensure that no new libraries sneak into
> your project when you update Mercury.

Or maybe `--disable-closed-source-impediments`.

Mark