[Haskell-cafe] Automation of external library installation in haskell package.

[Roman Cheplyaka]

* Johan Tibell <johan.tibell at gmail.com> [2012-11-18 12:28:50-0800]
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 11:51 AM, Maksymilian Owsianny <
> maksymilian.owsianny at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > However, the problem with hackage not being able to build the package, and
> > therefore generate documentation, remains. So conversely my question would
> > be
> > if there is any way to get around this?
> >
> 
> In the short term I'm afraid not. The plan is to eventually let users
> upload the documentation (after building it on their own machines).

Another option would be to add a configuration flag in the cabal file
that would disable compiling the library-dependent code (probably
through CPP). The only problem with that is that it needs to be enabled
by default (since we don't know whether we're building on hackage or
not) and needs to be explicitly disabled by normal users.

Unfortunately, cabal cannot automatically set the flag depending on
whether the library is installed or not.
I wrote about it in June (and got no response):
http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/cabal-devel/2012-June/008908.html

Roman