I'm currently removing *.o after building ghc to save space (I don't need
them for what I'm doing). Is there a straightforward way to tell GHC not to
build them in the first place, such as --disable-library-for-ghci does for
cabal
Not really. But you can try adding `--disable-library-for-ghci` to the line in rules/build-package-data.mk that starts with `"$$(ghc-cabal_INPLACE)" configure ...`.