[Haskell-cafe] Re: a cabal/database lib experience

[Paul Moore]

On 12/12/06, Ketil Malde <Ketil.Malde at bccs.uib.no> wrote:
> I'm possibly using cabal in a simplistic way, but I generally do either
>
>    ./Setup.lhs configure -p
>    ./Setup.lhs build
>    ./Setup.lhs install
[...]
> This is a lot of typing, and at least once I wrote a Makefile to
> automate it (oh, the irony of it!)
> Anyway, it would be nice if a 'cabal' command automated the whole
> sequence in one go, at least as an option.

I come from a Python background, and Python's distutils (which feels
very like cabal - or should that be the other way round?) tends to
have later commands include earlier ones. So,

    setup.py install

automatically does "build" (there is no explicit configure step).
Distutils tracks changes somehow (probably by file timestamp) to avoid
rerunning builds when not needed. Could cabal do that? I find it hard
to see why someone would want to do "install" without having done an
up to date "build".

Paul.