April 2009 - cabal-devel

[Hackage] #274: Add a 'build from sdist tarball' feature
by Hackage 23 Aug '09

23 Aug '09

#274: Add a 'build from sdist tarball' feature ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: guest | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: low | Milestone: Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.2.3.0 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: 6.8.2 Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- I've often seen Darcs repos where the sdist tarball was incomplete, or where a person had a tarball which was incomplete. I think this is because most people just never use the tarball; if they do ever use it, it's because it's what was downloaded from Hackage. The reason is that doing so is much more complex than 'configure; build; install': you need to configure, create an sdist tarball, cd into dist/; do a tar -xvf or whatever of the correct tarball; cd into *that* - and then you can configure/build/install. Assuming it is a working tarball. Now, of course you can automate it. After the first dozen times, I wrote myself a shellscript to do all that for me: function build_sdist { clean_configure && sdist && cd dist/ && untar *.tar.gz && cd `ls -t ./ | grep "/" | head -n 1` && clean_configure && build && hinstall; haddock && hinstall; } (This is pretty long and imperfect, but it would be even longer if all the other aliases and function definitions were included; I think they're pretty straightforwardly named though, so I haven't included them.) It seems to me that this would be, at the very least, a useful adjunct to cabal check - if it makes sense to see whether various fields are filled out sanely, surely it makes sense to see whether needed files are included/listed? It might be even better to make the normal 'runhaskell Setup build' do it from sdist, but this is harder to code (besides the forgoing, you'd need to copy in the configuration from the top-level, from when the user ran 'runhaskell Setup configure' and added whatever options) and possibly more confusing ("But Foo.hs *is* there, right there in src/! Why can't Cabal find it?"). So I'd be satisfied to do something like 'cabal checkdist'. -- gwern -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/274> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #467: Add support for HPC profiling.
by Hackage 15 Aug '09

15 Aug '09

#467: Add support for HPC profiling. ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Cabal-1.8 Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.6.0.1 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Similar to how we support ghc's "normal" profiling way, we should enable support to build packages with hpc turned on. This would also eliminate the need for people to add support on a per- package basis, see eg #430. See also #200. We should consider how to support these various flavours of profiling in a more extensible way. Different compilers have different ways, for example nhc has several (especially when used with hat). -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/467> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #481: License compatibility check
by Hackage 05 Aug '09

05 Aug '09

#481: License compatibility check ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: guest | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.6.0.1 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: unknown | Ghcversion: Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- It would be nice if Cabal could report license compatibility problems - e.g.: * Trying to build a BSD3-licensed package that depends on a GPL package * Trying to build a proprietary-licensed package that depends on a GPL package -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/481> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #411: Command to install dependencies of a package.
by Hackage 05 Aug '09

05 Aug '09

#411: Command to install dependencies of a package. ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: mornfall | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: cabal-install tool | Version: 1.6.0.1 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: easy (<4 hours) | Ghcversion: 6.8.3 Platform: | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Something like cabal install-deps or install --deps-only or such. We spoke about this with Duncan and this is the proposed solution to my use-case: I have a project that basically consists of a simple shebang haskell script (go.hs), which happens to have somewhat obscure dependencies. I am not interested in building a binary out of this script, nor installing it: but I'd like to use cabal to track and automatically install the dependencies for it. Hence, I would provide a cabal file, whose main purpose would be for people to run "cabal install-deps", which would enable them to run ./go.hs directly... Hopefully it is clear what I mean here... Don't hesitate to prod me if you have better suggestions, or, questions... -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/411> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #199: when installing a new version of GHC, there should be a way to upgrade my packages
by Hackage 18 Jul '09

18 Jul '09

#199: when installing a new version of GHC, there should be a way to upgrade my packages ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: guest | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: cabal-install tool | Version: 1.2.3.0 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: 6.8.2 Platform: Linux | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ If I have version 6.6 of GHC installed, with packages foo, bar, and bang, and I install ghc 6.8, I'd like a way to automatically install foo, bar, and bang. This could be part of GHC's installation script possibly, or maybe a feature of cabal install. cabal can check the installed packages for the previous version of GHC and "cabal install" them. -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/199> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #330: Take non-haddock documentation in account
by Hackage 01 Jul '09

01 Jul '09

#330: Take non-haddock documentation in account ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: fons | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.2.3.0 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: 6.8.2 Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- The generation and installation of Non-Haddock documentation (README and INSTALL files, LaTeX and Docbook tutorials/guides, Haskell examples using the package in question) is not currently taken in account by Cabal. Making Cabal understand how to generate documentation for all those formats would probably be too ambitious, but it could be eased (e.g. letting the user provide Makefiles instead of creating custom hooks). More importantly, the installation of documentation would be much easier with a new package property such as "doc-files" ("data-files" nor "extra- source-files" are semantically suitable). -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/330> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #325: SHGetFolderPath requiered to configure cabal 1.4
by Hackage 30 Jun '09

30 Jun '09

#325: SHGetFolderPath requiered to configure cabal 1.4 ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: guest | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.2.3.0 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: 6.8.2 Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- i try to install cabal with ghc 6.8.3 on XP. i get the error message GHCi could not find the following symbols SHGetFolderPath i saw some old bugs mentioning this problem - what is a current fix? -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/325> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #458: inconsistent use of CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS etc with build-type Configure
by Hackage 26 Jun '09

26 Jun '09

#458: inconsistent use of CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS etc with build-type Configure ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.2.3.0 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: 6.8.3 Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- We have a mismatch between the cabal Setup scripts which ignore `LDFLAGS` etc and provide `--extra-lib-dirs` instead, and some `./configure` scripts which grab the `CCFLAGS` etc and bung them into a `.buildinfo` file. This is bad because it means --extra-lib-dirs does not work for those packages and it also means that those packages consult the CCFLAGS etc and others do not. It's quite an inconsistent user interface. We should try to make it more consistent. One approach would be for cabal to consider the CCFLAGS etc, to combine them with the flags passed on the command line and those specified in the .cabal file. (We have code to analyse CC/LD/CPP flags and to split them up into the standard BuildInfo fields.) Then for configure scripts we could pass the whole lot. The danger of course is that the configure scripts duplicate it all and put it into a .buildinfo file. Another tempting option is to call configure with a clean environment so that it cannot pick up these vars. Unfortunately that might break some existing packages. We should be careful with the use of these env vars though, because while it's fine to change the user interface to cabal-install, the interface to the Setup.hs is a machine interface and the more we require of it, the more has to be implemented by every different build system. A case in point is the curl package. It has a .buildinfo file like: {{{ cc-options: @CPPFLAGS@ ld-options: @LDFLAGS@ }}} The `./configure` script checks: {{{ AC_TRY_CPP([#include <curl/curl.h>],,[no_curl=yes]) }}} Which uses the `CPPFLAGS`. So it's adding an extra package-specific user interface by consulting these environment variables. At the same time the configure script ignores the `--extra-lib-dirs=` and `--extra-include-dirs=` Setup.hs command line flags. This means that users doing what is advertised will find the package does not work. Indeed changing to `build-type: Simple` and deleting the configure script makes it work perfectly. So this mismatch is clearly harmful. See also #262 which should make these checks redundant. -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/458> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #435: ban upwardly open version ranges in dependencies on base
by Hackage 15 Jun '09

15 Jun '09

#435: ban upwardly open version ranges in dependencies on base ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Cabal-1.8 Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.2.3.0 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: 6.8.3 Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- This is wrong! {{{ build-depends: base }}} This is still wrong! {{{ build-depends: base >= 3 }}} Each major release of the base package breaks most packages. Packages should specify an upper bound on the base version. Eg: {{{ build-depends: base >= 3 && < 4 }}} or equivalently: {{{ build-depends: base == 3.* }}} Cabal should check for this and suggest a sensible upper version on the base package, given that we know that base follows the package version policy. Note this is a special case for base but in general we should do this for all packages that opt-in to the versioning policy (see #343). Doing it for all such packages is a medium term goal. Doing it for base is quick and easy and has a lot of immediate benefits for the next release of base. -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/435> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #497: on package not found error: mention "cabal update"
by Hackage 14 Jun '09

14 Jun '09

#497: on package not found error: mention "cabal update" ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: Martijn | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: cabal-install tool | Version: 1.6.0.1 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: unknown | Ghcversion: Platform: | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Together with the "There is no package named .." error, a message could be provided that updating the package list might solve the problem. -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/497> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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