My preferred approach is to check the generation script into source
control, and add it to Cabal's extra-source-files section. If the
generated file is a standard .hs module, Cabal should add it to the
sdist automatically.
You might want to add a note to the README documenting how to
regenerate the module, so anybody branching your code knows which file
to modify.
There are ways to make Cabal automatically generate a file, but they
seem to assume an external preprocessor operating on a (single input
file -> single output file) model. More complicated systems, such as
running a separate script or (many files -> many files) don't work
well.
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 14:00, Andrew Coppin
I'm working on a small Haskell package. One module in particular contains so much boilerplate that rather than write the code myself, I wrote a small Haskell program that autogenerates it for me.
What's the best way to package this for Cabal? Just stick the generated file in there? Or is there some (easy) way to tell Cabal how to recreate this file itself?