- cabal-devel - Haskell.org

Default install locations on Windows
by Duncan Coutts 27 Dec '09

27 Dec '09

All, For Cabal packages our default install locations on Windows are a bit of a mess. Firstly we do global installs by default. This used to make sense on Windows XP when everyone had admin permissions. It no longer makes sense for Vista or Windows 7. See this recent horror story from a new user: http://haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-December/071310.html I've talked for a while about switching the default to per-user installs on Windows: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/465 Now I'm not a regular Windows user so I would like some expert advice from Windows Haskell hackers. Specifically, are the default locations and layout for per-user installs OK? A related problem is that historically we tried to fudge things so that packages could be mostly relocatable by default. This is because Windows tends to make greater use of relocatable packages (giving users a choice of location at install time). There is a problem with relocatable packages that depend on libraries that contain data files: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/466 My proposed solution for this is to not do anything special about data files for windows and use the same directory layout as on Unix. That is, change: datadir = case buildOS of Windows | hasLibs -> windowsProgramFilesDir </> "Haskell" | otherwise -> "$prefix" _other -> "$prefix" </> "share", to datadir = case buildOS of Windows -> "$prefix" _other -> "$prefix" </> "share", BTW, why do we not want the "share" subdir? It means currently we end up with a per-package directory at the top level containing the data files for that package. So then the per-user install locations on Windows 7 would be: prefix: C:\Users\${USER}\AppData\Roaming\cabal bindir: $prefix\bin libdir: $prefix libsubdir: $pkgid\$compiler libexecdir: $prefix\$pkgid datadir: $prefix datasubdir: $pkgid docdir: $prefix\doc\$pkgid htmldir: $docdir\html haddockdir: $htmldir Then separately I think we need explicit support for constructing prefix independent packages which could check for these issues. eg: cabal configure --prefix-independent Duncan

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patch applied (cabal): Implement support for hugs and nhc98 package databases
by Duncan Coutts 24 Dec '09

24 Dec '09

Wed Dec 23 15:35:57 PST 2009 Duncan Coutts <duncan(a)haskell.org> * Implement support for hugs and nhc98 package databases Ignore-this: aa12e2a278e89544ead82d7c8d3b325a That is, work out which packages are installed for hugs and nhc98. In both cases there is special support for the core packages. In future both should use the standard method when they supply proper installed package info files for the bundled libraries. M ./Distribution/Simple/Configure.hs -10 +3 M ./Distribution/Simple/Hugs.hs -10 +137 M ./Distribution/Simple/NHC.hs -9 +140 View patch online: http://darcs.haskell.org/cabal/_darcs/patches/20091223233557-adfee-ba2aa542…

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patch applied (cabal): Simplify getInstalledPackages and callers
by Duncan Coutts 24 Dec '09

24 Dec '09

Wed Dec 23 15:48:57 PST 2009 Duncan Coutts <duncan(a)haskell.org> * Simplify getInstalledPackages and callers Ignore-this: 7927e992e0b040347dc24530219eb8eb No longer returns Maybe, we can find installed packages for all the compilers we support (and this feature is a requirement for support for new compilers). This is an API change so cannot merge to Cabal-1.8.x branch. M ./Distribution/Simple/Configure.hs -42 +17 View patch online: http://darcs.haskell.org/cabal/_darcs/patches/20091223234857-adfee-fea71652…

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patch applied (cabal): Find the version of hugs
by Duncan Coutts 24 Dec '09

24 Dec '09

Tue Dec 22 09:54:15 PST 2009 Duncan Coutts <duncan(a)haskell.org> * Find the version of hugs This is really hard and rather nasty. M ./Distribution/Simple/Hugs.hs -6 +43 View patch online: http://darcs.haskell.org/cabal/_darcs/patches/20091222175415-adfee-1eb64406…

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patch applied (cabal): Convert XXX comments to TODO or FIXME as appropriate
by Duncan Coutts 24 Dec '09

24 Dec '09

Tue Dec 22 08:02:47 PST 2009 Duncan Coutts <duncan(a)haskell.org> * Convert XXX comments to TODO or FIXME as appropriate M ./Distribution/Compat/TempFile.hs -4 +4 M ./Distribution/ModuleName.hs -1 +1 M ./Distribution/PackageDescription.hs -20 +1 M ./Distribution/PackageDescription/Configuration.hs -4 +4 M ./Distribution/Simple.hs -1 +1 M ./Distribution/Simple/PreProcess.hs -1 +1 M ./Distribution/Simple/Setup.hs -1 +1 M ./Distribution/Simple/SrcDist.hs -1 +1 View patch online: http://darcs.haskell.org/cabal/_darcs/patches/20091222160247-adfee-8a09b642…

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patch applied (cabal): Fixes for compiling Cabal with hugs
by Duncan Coutts 24 Dec '09

24 Dec '09

Wed Dec 23 02:39:16 PST 2009 Duncan Coutts <duncan(a)haskell.org> * Fixes for compiling Cabal with hugs Ignore-this: f49c719d33e3909996f391e80911c51c M ./Cabal.cabal -1 +1 M ./Distribution/Compat/Exception.hs -1 +1 M ./Distribution/Compat/TempFile.hs +1 M ./Distribution/Simple/Utils.hs -3 +3 View patch online: http://darcs.haskell.org/cabal/_darcs/patches/20091223103916-adfee-7a315d81…

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Auto reinstall packages for new GHC?
by jonathanGfischoff＠gmail.com 23 Dec '09

23 Dec '09

Hi, I heard on the #haskell irc channel that there might be a way to get cabal to automatically update a new version of ghc with all the previously installed packages. Is that true? If so, I would love to know how. -Jonathan

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[Hackage] #244: Add Changelog summary feature to sdist
by Hackage 22 Dec '09

22 Dec '09

#244: Add Changelog summary feature to sdist ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- 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: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- In a discussion with Audrey Tang, she mentioned that a very nice feature of CPAN which she missed in Hackage was standardized changes files. It seems to me that one way to acheive this would be to add a --changelog flag to sdist (or maybe make default). This call 'darcs changes' and copy into the ChangeLog everything up to 2 tags ago. (2 tags because the first tag might be you preparing for a release). I'd imagine parsing would be dead easy: 'lines' to split it up into individual entries, and then take until you hit a 'tagged' entry. If the resulting list is length of 1, then take again. So you'd go 'runhaskell Setup sdist --changelog', and ChangeLog in the tarball would have, say, for Monadius: ---- Wed Feb 20 18:37:42 EST 2008 gwern0(a)gmail.com tagged 0.91 Wed Feb 20 18:37:29 EST 2008 gwern0(a)gmail.com * misc improvements: newtype, cabal, fmt Fri Dec 7 16:23:53 EST 2007 gwern0(a)gmail.com * rm extra source-files The line was originally there because there is an icon for Monadius in the source-files and some sort of Windows resource text file telling Windows to use it; I'm removing the mention of them in the .cabal because I don't think Cabal handles that right now. Thu Dec 6 16:30:31 EST 2007 gwern0(a)gmail.com * whitespace changes, add haskell98 to dependencies Tue Dec 4 13:46:38 EST 2007 gwern0(a)gmail.com * mv cabal field so hackage doesn't complain Tue Dec 4 13:10:47 EST 2007 gwern0(a)gmail.com * cabal fixes Tue Dec 4 08:32:25 EST 2007 gwern0(a)gmail.com tagged 0.91 ---- At this point, Hackage could be updated to link to it in the same way as it does for the .cabal file. That way, people could then easily take a look and see what's new since the last version. (Said facility is currently a little difficult unless the package authors manually maintain a ChangeLog and specifically include it into the tarball; you'd still have to either go to the repo or download the tarball simply to find out what's different from the older packages.) --gwern -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/244> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #331: pkg-config error messages could be better
by Hackage 22 Dec '09

22 Dec '09

#331: pkg-config error messages could be better ----------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.4.0.1 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: very easy (<1 hour) | Ghcversion: 6.8.2 Platform: | ----------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Currently if you `cabal install X11-xft` but don't have the xft development package installed you get this during configure: {{{ cabal: The pkg-config package xft is required but it could not be found. }}} What is not immediately clear is that this is a native package and thus not something that `cabal-install` could have gone and fetched. So the wording of this message could be improved. Perhaps mentioning both in general terms and then specifically. For example saying that the development files for xft are not installed and that the user probably can and should install a native package that provides it. Specifically it's looking for a xft.pc file that pkg-config uses to tell is what compiler flags to use to use xft. A related problem is that the message is somewhat lost in the noise because we print the error to stdout rather than throwing it as an exception that we could print in the final summary. This problem is particulary bad when we have to have error message cross process boundaries, ie when cabal-install invokes a setup program. -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/331> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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[Hackage] #515: --extra-lib-dirs= should add -R/-rpath to hsc2hs calls
by Hackage 22 Dec '09

22 Dec '09

#515: --extra-lib-dirs= should add -R/-rpath to hsc2hs calls ------------------------------+--------------------------------------------- Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Cabal-1.8 Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.6.0.1 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: easy (<4 hours) | Ghcversion: Platform: | ------------------------------+--------------------------------------------- Currently the `--extra-lib-dirs=` flag is only used to add extra `-L` flags in calls to `gcc`, `hsc2hs` etc. On systems where `--extra-lib- dirs=` is necessary it's almost always the case that we also need `-R`/`-rpath` too. Apparently `-rpath` is somewhat controversial and some people argue against using it. However one case where it is clearly necessary is in invoking `hsc2hs`. This is because `hsc2hs` compiles, links and runs a C program. The program is run once on the host machine and never installed or distributed. So all the usual arguments against `-rpath` do not apply. Hard coding the paths of libs is fine since the program is only used once, in the build tree. It's also essential for it to actually work. Here's an example log from someone hitting this problem: {{{ $ cabal install pcre-light --extra-include-dirs=/usr/local/include --extra-lib-dirs=/usr/local/lib Resolving dependencies... 'pcre-light-0.3.1' is cached. Configuring pcre-light-0.3.1... Preprocessing library pcre-light-0.3.1... dist/build/Text/Regex/PCRE/Light/Base_hsc_make: error while loading shared libraries: libpcre.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory running dist/build/Text/Regex/PCRE/Light/Base_hsc_make failed command was: dist/build/Text/Regex/PCRE/Light/Base_hsc_make >dist/build/Text/Regex/PCRE/Light/Base.hs }}} On this system it appears that `/usr/local/lib` is not on the default static linker path, or the default dynamic linker path. So we need `-L/usr/local/lib` for the static linker and `-R/usr/local/lib` for the dynamic linker. -- Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/515> Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/> Hackage: Cabal and related projects

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