On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 14:58 -0400, John Dorsey wrote:
[problems with cabal install yi]
Curious, I tried this out, on a Debian etch box with GHC 6.8.3.
"cabal update ; cabal install yi --global" complained about needing alex >=2.0.something and <3.
Then "cabal install alex" happily installed alex version 2.2. Finally, "cabal install yi --global" worked fine.
Is something amiss with cabal-install? Shouldn't it have automatically installed alex? Or does it only do that with libraries, by design?
Right, currently it only tracks library dependencies, not tools. See: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/227 "cabal-install does consider build-tools as dependencies"
For that matter, "ghc-pkg list | grep -i alex" doesn't list anything, after I cabal-installed it.
The ghc package database is of libraries. Applications are not registered anywhere.
How does cabal verify the prerequisite alex version? (Or does it?)
It calls alex --version
I'm enjoying cabal since I've begun using it, but it's still somewhat opaque to me.
There's still plenty of work to do. You and indeed everyone else is most welcome to get involved and have a go at fixing bugs or adding frequently requested features. Easy tickets: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/report/13 Guide to the source code: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/wiki/SourceGuide Duncan