Hi Brian, For the next major release of Cabal, the plan is to deprecate packages with library and multiple executables. Each library/executable will have its own .cabal file. In this case it isn't required to split the build-depends field. Cheers, Krasimir
* I originally put my "Build-depends: base" in an "Executable:" stanza. This seems reasonable because presumably different executables (and libraries) could have different dependencies, and it is advantageous to keep track of dependencies on a fine-grained basis. Yet, Cabal requires the Build-depends to be in the main stanza. Why is this? Couldn't Cabal combine all the Build-Depends it finds into the one that it puts into the final package specification?
It is confusing that the first stanza contains both fields describing the whole package and fields describing a library. But Build-depends is a package-level thing (it's not in 2.1.2) because Cabal takes the package as the unit of distribution, building, etc. If you want to build this pachage, these are the other packages you need to have installed first. There has been some talk of a coarser level of structure in the indefinite future.