Duncan Coutts
On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 10:06 -0700, Isaac Jones wrote:
Emailing to libraries@, please followup to cabal-devel.
Here's a patch from Sigbjorn which adds --ghc-pkg-config-file= to cabal. This is an oldish patch, but I haven't stopped getting requests for this feature :)
This allows you to create a "local" package config file, rather than using the --user or --global files, this is useful for in-place building, as when you're developing a set of related packages.
I still have some debate about whether this patch should go in; it assumes a model of package registration where you have a config file (as opposed to a directory) which isn't the case for nhc or Hugs. But the idea doesn't seem to bother anyone but me, and the flag is clearly marked as a ghc-related flag, so I'm thinking of letting it through. Opinions?
Note that there is already a register --inplace flag to register a package in the build tree.
And this is mostly so you can build in the build tree, register to --user (or global), muck around a bit, and presumably unregister the package later.
To allow multiple packages to be built against each other inplace we'd also need some flag for configure.
To specify the package file location, you mean? I guess you could do something sloppy like: cd my-package ./setup build ./setup register --inplace --user cd my-other-package ./setup configure --user etc ghc-pkg unregister my-package --user (which is what I just did for cabal & cabal-install.)
Would this be enough? Do we really also need the ability to specify arbitrary package databases? What is the use case?
I think it's mainly for registering packages together in a build tree. peace, isaac