#670: cabal-install should warn about common problem after installing progs ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: cabal-install tool | Version: 1.6.0.3 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: easy (<4 hours) | Ghcversion: Platform: | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ There are a few common problems have when installing programs. * target bindir (or symlink-bindir) is not on the `$PATH` so they cannot run the program after installation. * target bindir is on the `$PATH` but the installed program is masked by the presence of the same named prog in a dir that is earlier on the `$PATH`. For example `/usr/local/bin/cabal` and `~/.cabal/bin/cabal`, the latter might have just been installed but the earlier one will still be picked up. * the shell keeping a cache of name -> path and so not picking up a new program. Eg in the above example, even if `~/.cabal/bin/` comes first on the `$PATH`, if bash has the mapping `cabal` -> `/usr/local/bin/cabal` then it will not notice when `~/.cabal/bin/cabal` is installed. The fix here is to run `hash -r`. The only time we might want to tell users to run `hash -r` is if the program did not previously exist and if it gets installed in a location that is earlier on the `$PATH` than an existing installed instance (which may thus be in the cache). Sadly we cannot query sh to find out what its cache holds. -- Ticket URL: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/670 Hackage http://haskell.org/cabal/ Hackage: Cabal and related projects