Yes, this is a problem.
To be honest, the project where I used this approach was never public, and
we didn't use sdist. I think that it's possible to check if you have
`git` executable,
and if the the project is in repository, otherwise there is no sense
in this information,
and information from a cabal file that is given to the hook can be used.
On 11 July 2014 16:09, Herbert Valerio Riedel
On 2014-07-11 at 11:46:36 +0200, Alexander V Vershilov wrote:
It's possible to use a SimpelUserHook setup type, and then in Setup.hs add preBuild hook that will generate a file in ./dist/autobuild/, then you can import this file in Main.hs and use this information.
I have used such Setup.hs (have not reviewed it for years), I think it may be improved.
Btw, the main problem with that variant is that it breaks down if you want need `cabal sdist` to work.
In order to have `cabal sdist` do something sensible I had to hack up an abomination of a `Setup.hs` which would rewrite the .cabal file and replace the `Setup.hs` by a `build-type: Simple` compliant one during `sdist` creation. It's really a pity Cabal makes this use-case so hard to achieve, as it would just need to provide a hook to determine the version-field dynamically...
Cheers, hvr
-- Alexander