Why does GHC 7.8 need dynamic libraries?

Question

GHC 7.8 is now dynamically linked by default. The FAQ says that this requires GHC to also load dynamic objects instead of static objects. Now my question is: Why is this the case? Why can't GHC continue to load static objects, why does it matter how GHC itself is linked?

Answer 1

According to Release notes for version 7.8.1:

On Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X, GHCi now uses the system dynamic linker by default, instead of its built in (static) object linker. This is more robust cross-platform, and fixes many long-standing bugs (for example: constructors and destructors, weak symbols, etc work correctly, and several edge cases in the RTS are fixed.)