[can we keep this on just one mailing list please? cabal-devel@ makes most sense to me] On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 10:46:26AM +0100, Duncan Coutts wrote:
The latest thing I've stumbled over is HsUnix.h in ghc-6.8. This header file is for defines to use when pre-processing Haskell code. It used to live in the global $GHCLIBDIR/include but now lives in the include dir for the unix package. This is probably the right thing to do, however...
How do packages that want to use this include actually use it? If they #include it directly in a .hs file then it'll work since ghc -package unix adds the unix package's include dir to the search path. But what if someone needs to use it in a .hsc file?
Well, then it does not work. It does not work because Cabal does not pass these include directories to hsc2hs
Is there a reason we can't just fix that, and pass hsc2hs "-Ifoo" for each includes directory "foo" in a package we depend on?
In fact this totally relies on a package database to remember what search directories to use when pre-processing dependent packages. In other words it only has a chance of working with ghc at the moment, or nhc in future if/when it implements a package database.
Yes, I think that at some point all impls will need some sort of package database (or perhaps Cabal could manage a package database itself for some or all impls?). Thanks Ian