On 30/12/2007, at 2:00 AM, Duncan Coutts wrote:
cabal install --docs --everything-else
What would the user interface be? Are there any other categories than docs? Is it additive, subtractive? Can the default be explained in terms of the new proposed flags?
Interesting questions. I see in a related discussion with Bryan O'Sullivan you say:
By the way, is there a reason why a .cabal file can specify multiple executables, but only one library? LLVM wants to be built in a modular fashion to minimise the number of dependencies, and it would be nice to be able to put llvm-common, llvm-core, and llvm-engine all in a single .cabal file, each with different ld-options.
It's because we don't yet support building collections of related packages very well. There have been suggestions that when we do support that better that there should only be one library or executable per .cabal file.
So what we really want is a way to say (at least) build/haddock/ install for each package/executable we're interested in as well. HaXml is one example, where I don't really care about the executables and just want the libraries + docs. I expect you and Iain can draw on your experience as distro packagers and thrash this out better than I can. (No pressing need from me, I'm just armchairing again.) cheers peter