Hello, Looking at just examples, there are a few separate issues here. 1. Installation of example source for review 2. Building/installation of example programs For the second issue, the buildExamples flag suggested by Henning works well to actually build the examples with cabal, but the install location is still a problem. Most users wouldn't want example executables to go into their bin directory, especially not in the case of global installs. To the best of my knowledge, Cabal currently doesn't support separate installation locations for multiple executables, nor does it support building but not installing executables. With the first issue, the problem is simpler. There's no location for source code to be installed to. Users can download the package and unpack it themselves, or the developer can include demo source as a "data file" and install it to the datadir (IMO a poor choice). One option is to add support for different installation locations for each executable. Perhaps the --installdir flag could be extended to support a syntax like the following: --installdir=executableName:/path/to/install where if executableName matches one of the executables known to cabal, it will install just that executable to the specified location. This puts a larger burden on users, however, since they would need to know the name(s) of all the demo executables. It also doesn't address the issue of source location. Another way is to add a special type of executable for tests and demo programs to cabal. A user would specify a directory in the .cabal file (or command-line) to which tests would be installed. Cabal would then build the identified tests/demos for the package and put them into that specific directory, as well as the source code. This also answers the question of where to put executables that are Buildable but not Installable. Thoughts? Cheers, John Lato

Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 21:07:53 -0400 From: "John D. Ramsdell" Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Examples To: Haskell Cafe Message-ID: <7687290b0908091807y1d4a5329w6b452c6a3af5e044@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Maybe in addition to having a buildable boolean in a library or executable section, there should be an installable boolean. It would default to true, but when false, the library or executable section is ignored during package installation.

John