#789: build-depends on packages that provide no library ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ Reporter: duncan | Owner: Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: cabal-install tool | Version: HEAD Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: unknown | Ghcversion: Platform: | ---------------------------------+------------------------------------------ It is possible to list build-depends on packages that have just an executable and no library. Currently the behaviour of cabal-install does not consider this and it will allow such packages to be pulled in as dependencies. It leads to problems however because the non-lib package never gets registered with ghc-pkg and so it leads to re-install loops. The solution is for cabal-install to not consider exe-only packages to be valid for satisfying a build-depends requirement. It should produce a suitable error message. Note that it must take into account the posibility that a newer or older version of a package may switch from exe only to exe+lib or just lib, or indeed vica versa. We should mark exe-only versions of the package as excluded with a reason. Then if the dep is not satisfiable then we can explain why all the excluded ones were excluded (ie due to not exposing a lib). -- Ticket URL: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/789 Hackage http://haskell.org/cabal/ Hackage: Cabal and related projects