You should not use the release flavour for development because it omits all recompilation info (for packaging determinism reasons). So, when using that flavour, recompilation checking does not work.

wow, thank you -- I had no idea. That would be super useful info to add to https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/blob/master/hadrian/doc/flavours.md

I believe you should be able to use almost any other flavour. For example, --devel2 will be able to run the docs target.

how can I tell which flavour(s) can "run the docs target"?

Simon

On Wed, 15 Apr 2026 at 14:34, Sam Derbyshire <sam.derbyshire@gmail.com> wrote:

Simon,

You should not use the release flavour for development because it omits all recompilation info (for packaging determinism reasons). So, when using that flavour, recompilation checking does not work.

I believe you should be able to use almost any other flavour. For example, --devel2 will be able to run the docs target.

Sam