Problems with install-includes

[Duncan Coutts]

On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 18:02 +0100, George Giorgidze wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In my project I am using C include/header files that are
> hierarchically nested into folders. These header files are used to
> compile the Haskell package and everything is fine with the
> compilation process.
> I want these include files also to be installed with the package. From
> the online documentation of Cabal I learned that there exists specific
> field for this purpose called install-includes. However, it does not
> work when include files are hierarchically nested into folders. Here
> is relevant part of the cabal file I am using.
> 
>   include-dirs: cbits/sundials/include
>   install-includes: nvector/nvector_serial.h
> 
> when I am issuing cabal install command I am getting the following error:
> 
> cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
> Hydra-0.1 failed during the final install step. The exception was:
> /home/ggg/.cabal/lib/Hydra-0.1/ghc-6.10.1/include/nvector: copyFile: does not
> exist (No such file or directory)
> 
> It seems to me that cabal forgets to create parent directories for
> folder nested include files. For not-nested include files
> install-includes filed works fine.
> 
> The Cabal version I am using is 1.6.0.1.
> The cabal-install version I am using is 0.6.0
> 
> Currently, as a workaround I am using data-files field to install
> include files. However, I would like to see this issue fixed (I assume
> it is a bug).

Yes it's a bug. Thanks.

The problem is the code in Distribution/Simple/Install.hs in the
function installIncludeFiles. You'll notice that it creates the toplevel
target 'include' directory, but you'll also notice that the directory
component of each .h file is not created:

   unless (null incs) $ do
     createDirectoryIfMissingVerbose verbosity True incdir
     sequence_ [ copyFileVerbose verbosity path (incdir </> f)
               | (f,path) <- incs ]

If fixed a similar bug in the data files code recently. This code is
unfortunately not very well factored so I missed the equivalent issue in
the includes.

I've pushed a patch to Cabal HEAD. Could you confirm that it works? If
so I'll push it to the 1.6.x branch which means it'll make it into the
upcoming 1.6.0.2 release.

Duncan