[Haskell-cafe] Listing package dependencies from GHC

[Thomas Schilling]

On 3 maj 2007, at 17.53, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> This is not a Cabal bug. By design, Cabal does not just pick up any
> packages from the environment like --make does. One of the main points
> of Cabal is to be able to explicitly track dependencies of a  
> package, so
> we do require that they all be listed explicitly. Cabal then tells ghc
> to *only* look in those listed packages and ignore all others even if
> they happen to be installed.
>
> Now certainly it would be nicer if ghc+cabal could be more helpful and
> tell you all the missing packages that you need to list in the
> "build-depends" field in the .cabal file, rather than currently where
> you have to do it one by one.

In fact I was thinking of something more than this.  When I said  
"file a bug" I didn't intend to describe it as a bug but as a  
feature, which are also managed by the bug tracker.  Also, I agree  
that dependencies should be listed explicitly; it might be very  
useful to let Cabal generate you a template with some sane  
suggestions, though.

/ Thomas