[Haskell-cafe] Using Cabal during development

[Jonathan Daugherty]

> Cabal/cabal-install are good tools for distribution and
> installation, but I was wondering -- as I was starting to learn how
> to use Cabal -- how do usually Haskell developpers build their
> softwares (and especially medium or big libraries) while they are
> still developping them ?

The first thing I always do is create a skeletal cabal file for my
project and add Library and Executable sections to it.  The executable
might be a test/demo program, or it might be a real app.  I usually
try to put whatever I can into a library to keep my executable source
lightweight.

My development flow relies heavily on some emacs integration with
darcs that I wrote, which allows me to press C-c C-t to run the darcs
test hook preference in am emacs buffer, which happens to be bound to
something like "cabal build && some_test_command" in most of my
Haskell repositories.  That way I don't usually have to leave my
editor to see the build failures and address them.

-- 
  Jonathan Daugherty