[Haskell-cafe] cabal-install profiling libraries

[Johannes Waldmann]

Here's another instance of the machine (*) telling me what to do, 
instead of doing it (or am I missing something):

I have a large set of cabal packages installed with ghc.
Then suddenly I need some package Foo with profiling. 
So I switch to library-profiling: True  in  my .cabal/config,
and then "cabal install Foo" -  failing with the message:

 Perhaps you haven't installed the profiling libraries for package `Bar'

for some package Bar that Foo depends upon. - Dear Cabal: Yes!
I know that I haven't installed them! I want you to install them for me!
But it isn't listening ...

(*) "machine" = everything in that metal box that was so expensive
and has a lot of cables coming out, and ventilators running.


Of course you know that I have the highest respect for the work
of the cabal authors. I'm just suggesting that the above feature
(auto-re-install dependencies) would be helpful. Perhaps it's already there?
If not - would it be hard to specify? To build? Or would it have
bad consequences?

Is it "cabal upgrade --reinstall"? But that was deprecated?
Here I really want "reinstall with exactly the same versions".
Is it the problem that their sources may have vanished, meanwhile?
Could it be solved by having "cabal install" storing a copy of
the source package that it used?

Thanks - J.W.