On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 07:53:42AM -0800, Howard B. Golden wrote:

Hi,

I am making my first package to be installed with Cabal from Hackage. I know how to run the various steps (configure, build, install, etc.) using runhaskell Setup.hs.

By the way, it is no longer recommended to do runhaskell Setup.hs directly---instead, use cabal install (or cabal configure, cabal build, etc.) which will call Setup.hs indirectly.

Is there some way I can package my package as a tar.gz (using sdist) and then test it from a local file as if it were being downloaded from Hackage by cabal install? (If this is documented, I couldn't find it. If this isn't documented, it should be IMO. If this isn't currently available, I request the feature be added.)

You may be interested in something like http://hackage.haskell.org/package/cabal-dev or http://hackage.haskell.org/package/capri

Also, do I have to do something special in the .cabal file (or elsewhere) to get Haddock run on the source files?

You can pass the --enable-documentation flag to cabal install; or you can run 'cabal haddock' to build the documentation separately after installing. -Brent