Providing a smooth default user experience

[Johan Tibell]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 8:43 AM, Duncan Coutts
<duncan.coutts at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> *cabal build should imply cabal install --only-dependencies
>> *
>> If you're currently working on a package, the right [1] way to build it is
>> as follows:
>>
>> cabal install --only-dependencies
>> cabal build
>
>
> I've been thinking along similar lines recently. We should be thinking
> about package environments (which spans multiple packages) rather than
> individual packages, and the UI should reflect that. Right now it's very
> much centred on individual packages, not collections.
>
> So "cabal configure" should configure/reconfigure the package
> environment, not the individual package. It should make an install plan
> for the current environment (which at minimum is a single target package
> and its dependencies but could be several packages in the same env).
> Then of course executing that install plan by building any of the
> targets should go and build deps as necessary.

Should I interpret this as you're in favor of the first steps towards
such a change, as described above (automatically install
dependencies), with a flag to opt out?

-- Johan