You can have a description file named Nemesis, with content nemesis = do clean [ "**/*.hi" , "**/*.o" , "manifest" ] task "dist" $ do sh "cabal clean" sh "cabal configure" sh "cabal sdist" task "i" (sh "ghci -isrc src/System/Nemesis.hs") task "manifest" $ do sh "find . | grep 'hs$' > manifest" then after run `nemesis`, there will be a compiled bin `nem` in your local path, which allows you to do `nem clean` Install with `cabal install nemesis` Cheers, -- jinjing