Build-depends usefull for Cabal?

[Einar Karttunen]

Hello

Would having a build-depends in addition to depends make sense in
Cabal? Most package systems make this distinction. I can think
of two use cases for this:

1) TH libraries (if GHC starts supporting avoiding to link to them)

* I am packaging a library of TH utility functions for
  class deriving. Most programs need this only on build
  time and don't need it at runtime (except for GHC linker reasons).

2) It would make tool dependencies clearer

* It is currently impossible to depend upon a tool at runtime.
  But is this needed for Cabal?

3) It would make translating dependencies to other package systems
easier.


This is not high priority at any rate. The build-depends field would
default on the value of depends.

- Einar Karttunen