[fpc-devel] Please include gmp.dll in Win32 distribution of FPC 2.6.2 and later

[Alexander Klenin]

On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Michael Van Canneyt
<michael at freepascal.org> wrote:

> That is a bit of a difficult one. gmp just provides just the interface of an
> external library.
> If we do it fo this one, we should do it for all the libraries for which we
> provide headers.

For marketing purposes, mostly. I speak about real Russian schools,
where Pascal usage has fallen from about 80% to about 40% in recent few years,
and continues to decline rapidly.
In Russia, Pascal is Internet Explorer of programming languages :)

> Is there not a native pascal solution for arbitrary precision math ? I seem
> to remember that there are several ones floating around, maybe we should
> simply include one of them.
Writing high-quality arbitrary precision arithmetics is hard.
The fact that Free Pascal uses GMP instead of homegrown solution has actually
earned some praise.
Of course, if good enough native solution does exist, I am all for including it.
In short term, however, adding gmp.dll in 2.6.2 release will make it
available at least
for upcoming Russian Olympiad in Informatics.

--
Alexander S. Klenin