[Haskell-cafe] how to write cabal package file for executable with unit tests?

[Richard Cobbe]

What's the preferred way to write a cabal configuration file for a package
that contains an executable and a test suite?  The only thing I've found
that seems to work is to put a thin wrapper Main.hs into the executable,
put all of the actual code into the library, and then have the test-suite
include the library in its build-depends list.

This works, but I find it mildly annoying that I have to separate the code
out in this fashion -- especially since the unit tests require me to expose
modules in my library that aren't really part of the library's public
interface.

In more detail:

This is a follow-up to a thread I posted back on Feb 2; you can see it on
GMane at <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/109374>.
The original example (tarball attached to the first message in that thread)
was a package structured as a library with unit tests.  After acting on
Erik's suggestion to put the library and test-suite source in different
directories, I was able to compile the library without the type error I
originally mentioned.

However, this isn't really the package structure I want.  The package is
actually intended to produce a standalone executable, not a library.  My
original example used a library for reasons that I don't honestly remember
-- I think I more or less stumbled upon that structure as something that
more or less worked, given the difficulty of getting Cabal, test suites,
Happy, and Alex to all work together well.

So I tried replacing the "Library" section of the cabal file with an
"Executable" section (sample tarball attached), but then I can't get the
tests to compile.  If I leave sample as a build-depends for the test-suite,
then "cabal configure --enable-tests" fails with

    Preprocessing test suite 'sample-tests' for sample-0.4...
    <command line>: cannot satisfy -package-id sample-0.4-inplace
        (use -v for more information)

If I take sample out of the build-depends list for the test-suite, then
"cabal configure --enable-tests" works, but "cabal build" fails:

    test-src/RunTests.hs:8:8:
        Could not find module `Parser'
        It is a member of the hidden package `ghc-7.6.3'.
        Perhaps you need to add `ghc' to the build-depends in your .cabal file.
        Use -v to see a list of the files searched for.

Either way, "cabal configure && cabal build" works fine; it's only when I
try to build the test suite that things break down.

Thanks,

Richard
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