README.gmp

SWI-Prolog and the GMP library

Author:  Jan Wielemaker
Created: Aug 21, 2005

The GNU GMP library (GNU  Multiple   Precision  Arithmetic  Library), is
available from http://www.swox.com/gmp/. It  provides multiple precision
integer  and  rational  (N/M)  arithmetic  to  SWI-Prolog.  By  default,
SWI-Prolog uses GMP, but it can  be   built  without using the configure
option --disable-gmp. Statically linking GMP  makes SWI-Prolog about 20%
larger, which may be the most important reason not to want it.

Unix
----

On  Unix(-like)  systems,  configure  should   deal  with  building  and
installation issues.

Windows
-------

Windows is a different matter.  The  GMP   people  state  it is too much
trouble making a Windows version. Nevertheless, it can be done.  I found
three starting points:

	(1) http://developer.berlios.de/projects/win32gmp/
		- Static library
		- Big (2.5MB, adds 800 KB to Prolog dll) 

	(2) http://na-inet.jp/na/bnc/wingmp.html
		- Only for MSVC 7 (.NET)

	(3) http://fp.gladman.plus.com/computing/gmp4win.htm
		- Brian Gladman's build instructions for GMP on
		  MSVC.

(2) is basically a precompiled version created   with  (3), but only the
.NET version. I've tried  to  follow  (3)   for  MSVC  6,  but DevStudio
crashed.

(1) is created by Miki Tebeka, who  told   me  it is build using MingW +
Msys (www.mingw.org). With some more remarks I   managed  to find a good
way to build a gmp.lib that can be used with MSVC 6:

	* Get MSYS (1.0.10) and MinGW (4.1.1)
		From http://www.mingw.org/
	* Install MSYS.
	* Get the source for GMP (I used 4.1.4)
		From http://www.swox.com/gmp/
	* Extract to a place *not holding spaces in the mingw path*
	* Build using
		% CFLAGS=-O2 ./configure
	    	% make
		% make check	*important to run the tests*

Now  you  have  a  static  version   of    the   library  for  MinGW  in
.libs/libgmp.a. Only, this uses alloca() which  is provided by libgcc.a.
We want alloca() as it is faster and avoids memory fragmentation. So:

	* Find libgcc.a using 
		% gcc -print-libgcc-file-name
	* Find the file defining alloca() using the command below.
	  For me this was _chkstk.o.  Guess that is pretty stable.
		% nm -o `gcc -print-libgcc-file-name` | grep alloca
	* Now merg _chkstk.o into our library:
		% ar x `gcc -print-libgcc-file-name` _chkstk.o
		% cp .libs/libgmp.a gmp.a
		% ar q gmp.a _chkstk.o
		% ranlib gmp.a
		% mv gmp.a gmp.lib

Done!  You can use gmp.h and gmp.lib in an MSVC project.