building only the docs

[Peter Gammie]

On 30/12/2007, at 2:00 AM, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> cabal install --docs --everything-else
>
> What would the user interface be? Are there any other categories than
> docs? Is it additive, subtractive? Can the default be explained in  
> terms
> of the new proposed flags?

Interesting questions. I see in a related discussion with Bryan  
O'Sullivan you say:

>> By the way, is there a reason why a .cabal file can specify multiple
>> executables, but only one library?  LLVM wants to be built in a  
>> modular
>> fashion to minimise the number of dependencies, and it would be  
>> nice to
>> be able to put llvm-common, llvm-core, and llvm-engine all in a  
>> single
>> .cabal file, each with different ld-options.
>
> It's because we don't yet support building collections of related
> packages very well. There have been suggestions that when we do  
> support
> that better that there should only be one library or executable
> per .cabal file.

So what we really want is a way to say (at least) build/haddock/ 
install for each package/executable we're interested in as well. HaXml  
is one example, where I don't really care about the executables and  
just want the libraries + docs.

I expect you and Iain can draw on your experience as distro packagers  
and thrash this out better than I can.

(No pressing need from me, I'm just armchairing again.)

cheers
peter