[Haskell-cafe] GHC API arguments via cabal/stack?

[David Turner]

Hi all,

I'm working on a little program that uses GHC as a library to do some
static analysis on a project I'm working on. It runs things as far as the
typechecker (so there's no Template Haskell remaining) and then does the
analysis on the resulting AST.

Here is how I'm calling GHC at the moment:

runAnalyser :: FilePath -> [String] -> [String] -> IO [(Module, [Fact],
[Assertion])]
runAnalyser srcDir args modules = do
  defaultErrorHandler defaultFatalMessager defaultFlushOut $ do
      runGhc (Just libdir) $ do
        dflags <- getSessionDynFlags
        (dflags', leftover, warnings) <- parseDynamicFlagsCmdLine dflags
                                          (map noLoc $ args ++ modules)
        setSessionDynFlags dflags'
        setTargets =<< forM modules (\exampleModule ->
          guessTarget (exampleModuleFile srcDir exampleModule) Nothing)
        load LoadAllTargets

        execWriterT $ forM_ modules $ \exampleModule -> do
          modSum <- lift $ getModSummary $ mkModuleName exampleModule
          p <- lift $ parseModule modSum
          t <- lift $ typecheckModule p
          case tm_renamed_source t of
            Nothing -> return ()
            Just (hsGroup, _, _, _) -> do
              assertions <- liftIO $ loadAssertions
                          $ exampleModuleFile srcDir exampleModule
              let mod = ms_mod $ pm_mod_summary $ tm_parsed_module t
              tell [( mod
                    , runFactM (moduleName mod) (facts hsGroup)
                    , assertions)]


The problem I'm currently facing is that this requires me to pass in the
arguments to GHC, including where all the package databases are and all the
package ids that stack has decided to use. So far, I've just copy-pasted
this from the stack log and hard-coded it, but that's clearly not a good
long-term solution.

I've half-heartedly tried to fool stack into running my analyser as the
compiler, but stack calls ghc more times than just the one call that I need
the arguments from. I could make it pass through to the real ghc but this
feels like piling hacks on top of hacks.

I've also briefly contemplated using the Cabal library to read my .cabal
file and work out what to do, but I'm unsure that this would work nicely
under stack. At least, I'm not sure quite what to do with all the package
databases and other stuff that stack does for you.

Is there a sensible and robust way to get these args as stack would make
them?

Many thanks,

David
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