Cabal --builddir

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi Duncan,

>> i.e. cabal accepts the --builddir command, but the setup that cabal
>> builds doesn't. Why?
>
> Hmm. Does your ghc-6.8 have Cabal-1.6.0.2 registered? If you built
> Cabal-1.6.0.2 and cabal-install with ghc-6.10 but not also for 6.8 then
> cabal-install will be forced to pick an older Cabal lib when compiling
> Setup scripts for 6.8.

Cabal-1.6.0.2 is registered and built with ghc-6.8.3 - I installed it
with Cabal seconds before running this example.

My cabal.exe comes from the hackage website, the binary you put up
some time ago. I guess that is probably the issue.

> Really of course we should notice this earlier and complain that we
> cannot use this new feature while using the older lib version. We should
> file a ticket about that. In fact the whole issue with what the Setup
> command line must accept is a tricky issue when it comes to working with
> custom build systems.

Meh. Custom build scripts are brittle and evil - in my particular case
the custom build script was trivial so adding build-type:Simple fixes
everything. However, I'd like to know (before I push a change) that
build-type:Simple will work out the box with the Cabal that got
installed with ghc-6.8.3. So that means figuring out what Cabal
ghc-6.8.3 shipped with, and which Cabal can cope with
build-type:Simple - is there any way to figure that out in general,
and what is the answer in this specific case?

Thanks

Neil