Peter, BTW, do file a bug report describing this issue so we do not forget. If you want to include my two suggestions then you could link it to the ticket aboug making cabal/cabal-install remember what files it installs. Duncan On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 18:37 +0700, Peter Gammie wrote:

Imagine this: you're hacking a library, and occasionally you put a "- p" on your config line and sometimes you don't.

(My cycle is occasional-clean-setup then build, which I grant might be a bit paranoid. I get impatient and fiddle with the profiling and optimisation options.)

Now, if one compiles a library with "-p", then without it, the old profiling library persists in the installed location, leading to some head scratching when a later compilation with a "-p" config option mysteriously fails.

Two proposals:

- rm -r $INSTALL_LOCATION (e.g. ~/lib/package/) (brutal but effective; I think Cabal should claim ownership of at least the package subdirs that it will populate) - print "Compiling normally..." and "Compiling for profiling..." to make it clearer when the compilation craps out

I guess you'll be squeamish about the first one, but I for one would like such an option when hacking.

cheers peter