#289: symlink binaries into ~/bin ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: cabal-install tool | Version: 1.2.3.0 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: normal | Ghcversion: 6.8.2 Platform: | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Currently cabal-install uses `--prefix=$HOME/.cabal` and does not specify `--bindir` so we use `$HOME/.cabal/bin` as the bindir. Obviously this is not on the `$PATH` by default. It would be trivial to specify `--bindir=$HOME/bin` however the worry is that we would be stomping on programs that the user has already installed there. One solution is to continue to install into `$HOME/.cabal/bin` and then to make symlinks into `$HOME/bin` if the target name does not already exist. If the name does exist we could give a warning and let the user sort it out. Of course we need to be able to overwrite our own symlinks. We know it's a symlink we're allowed to overwrite if it links into `$HOME/.cabal/bin`. It would be nice to install into `$HOME/.cabal/bin` using versioned binary names (Cabal supports that now) and symlink the generic name into `$HOME/bin`. We can discover the names of the binary we're installing by checking the executable names in the `PackageDescription`. Of course this has to be an optional feature since not everyone wants it and there are no symlinks on windows. I'd imagine we'd have it in the `~/.cabal/config` file something like: {{{ prefix: $HOME/.cabal -- bindir: $HOME/.cabal/bin symlink-bindir: $HOME/bin }}} -- Ticket URL: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/289 Hackage http://haskell.org/cabal/ Hackage: Cabal and related projects