We've discussed this before, and I think the conclusion we came to was

I'm not sure what was meant by "it becomes clear what needs to be rebuild because we actually have accurate information about it." Maybe

#592: cabal test does not detect that cabal build needs to be re-run ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Reporter: kowey | Owner: ttuegel Type: defect | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Cabal library | Version: 1.6.0.1 Severity: normal | Keywords: Difficulty: unknown | Ghcversion: Platform: | ----------------------------+----------------------------------------------- Comment(by tibbe): Replying to [comment:5 ttuegel]: that 'cabal test' should run 'cabal build' if necessary, but we should not change the behavior of './Setup test'. Is that still the consensus? Sounds good to me. this is naive, but I think if we simply call 'cabal build' before running 'cabal test', it will only rebuild what needs rebuilding. That is, I think all the checks we need are in place already. Am I missing something? Nope. Just run `cabal build` before. -- Ticket URL: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/592#comment:6 Hackage http://haskell.org/cabal/ Hackage: Cabal and related projects