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

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sun, 2 Dec 2012, Alexander Klenin wrote:

> 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 :)

Globally, it's more like  opera or iceweasel :-)

>
>> 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.

Define homegown ? 
GMP most likely also is homegrown, as a lot of open source was 
started homegrown :-)

> Of course, if good enough native solution does exist, I am all for including it.

I did a search. There seem to be at least 2, bigint and MPArith.
The latter seems still maintained. The former may be easier to 
pick up and include.

If you can agree with the authors that it can be included under LGPL 
or modified LGPL, I will do the work to include one of them.

> In short term, however, adding gmp.dll in 2.6.2 release will make it
> available at least
> for upcoming Russian Olympiad in Informatics.

Well, 2.6.2 is at RC1 stage, so that will not happen, I suppose.

In the short term, it might be easier to convince them to install the 
library on the machines that are used for the Olympiad. You can explain 
the problem to them as well, I suppose. If they allow pascal and know 
that they will be asking an arbitrary math question, they could decide to 
play fair and put the library on the machine.

In the long term, I think it is better to include a native solution with 
a more pascal-like interface.

Michael.