how to implement uninstall & Logging paths of installed files?

On 9/16/06, Isaac Jones wrote:

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"Johan Tibell" writes:

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I'm trying to write a module that logs all files installed by Cabal to a file. I've looked through parts of the source and conclude that some of the information (the one used to generate prefixes) needed to construct absolute file paths for installed files exists in Distribution.Simple.LocalBuildInfo. Where does the actual copying take place and is there a way to list the files being copied or am I better of trying to list all files in the dist/ dir and prepend the prefixes myself? What code decides how files are laid out in dist/?

Hi all, FWIW, Johan is still interested in this. I would look especially at the "copy" and "install" commands. Look at Distribution.Simple.Utils, lots of "copy" related functions in there. Look especially at the "prefix" type parameters. The Distribution.Simple.Install.install function also implements the "copy" command; so "install" is more general, the prefix is all that changes, so look especially at this function. Look at the copydest parameter. Someone (else?) was looking into writing an "uninstall" feature, which would log the files installed so that it could remove them later. I think that logging & uninstall could be implemented quite effectively by tweaking the "install" target so that it first copies stuff into a temporary location, then uses a "find" type algorithm to discover all of the files that are meant to be installed. The find algorithm would create this list of files and dump it to a log. It would then use a recursive copy algorithm to copy all of these files into place. (The copy command would do pretty much the same, but skip the copy-in-place step.) The recursive copy function would have to not freak out if the directories already exist, of course. Install should also install this "log" of files somplace (where?), for the sake of uninstall. How's that sound? peace, isaac