[Hackage] #678: Add framework to provide ad-hoc diagnostics for common failures

[Hackage]

#678: Add framework to provide ad-hoc diagnostics for common failures
----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  duncan         |        Owner:     
      Type:  enhancement    |       Status:  new
  Priority:  normal         |    Milestone:     
 Component:  Cabal library  |      Version:     
  Severity:  normal         |     Keywords:     
Difficulty:  unknown        |   Ghcversion:     
  Platform:                 |  
----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
 Just as we have a system for doing various QA checks on cabal packages,
 perhaps we should have something to help users diagnose common problems
 with the system environment that crop up as e.g. linker errors.

 For example, a user reported in #haskell that the wx package failed to
 configure and reported that the `stdc++` C library was missing. We
 eventually discovered that although the standard C++ library was
 installed, it was not found by `gcc -lstdc++`. Installing the C++
 components of gcc (ie the distro package that provides `g++`) fixed the
 issue, presumably because installing that package modified the standard
 gcc linker search path to include the location where `stdc++` was already
 installed.

 It would be good if after diagnosing this particular issue, it was easy to
 code up a test for this situation and add it into Cabal's `Simple` build
 system so that other users might get more helpful diagnostics in future.
 It does not need to be comprehensive, so it is ok to try and grok the
 output of linkers and to work just on some OSs or just with gcc for
 example.

 This might also help with common ghc problems.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/678>
Hackage <http://haskell.org/cabal/>
Hackage: Cabal and related projects