haskell FFI - using dll on non-windows os?

Question

Can be a windows dll used/interfaced with Haskell's FFI(Foreign Function Interface) on a non windows OS? For example if I have OSX, can I interface a .dll with FFI (use the dll functions) ?

Example: I have a my.dll file that was written and compiled in Windows. With Haskell's FFI (Foreign Function Interface) I can write a program in Haskell that will load my.dll and use the functions from it. The question is: can I write a Haskell program in OSX and use my.dll via FFI, or does it has to be Haskell program compiled in Windows (since I want to use my.dll)?

Answer 1

If you're trying to load an external dynamic library, it has to be compiled for the platform you're trying to load it on. On Windows, it'll be a DLL file, on Linux it's a .so file ("shared object"), on OSX I have no idea what it'll be... But if you want to load a file that essentially contains machine code, it has to be compiled for the target platform you want to run it on.

If you're asking "can I get Haskell to figure out which file it needs to load based on the platform I'm running on", well that is another question... ;-)