On Sat, 2008-03-01 at 00:02 -0800, Evan Martin wrote:
[resent after subscribing to the list]
I'm working on a package that requires building a helper binary as part of its install process.
I presume you mean a private binary that's needed at runtime, rather than a program like a code-gen needed at build time but not installed. Cabal does not have any direct support for private binaries, so you'll have to use a custom Setup.hs. Perhaps it should, if you can describe what you think is needed in general, file a feature request here: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/
This binary is written in C (with good reason), and on a Debian system would be installed into a path like /usr/lib/myproject/mybinary, because it's only used internally by the main program binary.
Cabal knows about the 'libexec' path which sounds like it might be what you want, though that doesn't include any package subdir (though perhaps it should - it is currently unused). Alternatively just install into the 'libdir' which does include the package subdir. let dirs = absoluteInstallDirs pkg_descr lbi copydest copyFileVerbose verbosity file (libdir dirs file) At runtime you can get the libexec and libdir that the user chose at configure time using the Paths_pkgname module which exports getLibDir and getLibexecDir amongst others. Duncan