[Haskell-cafe] [HF-discuss] Do something about Cabal?

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

The correct URL to the up-to-date cabal user guide, since a couple of 
years ago or more, is:

cabal.readthedocs.io

In principle, someone could and should make a copy at 
www.haskell.org/cabal, but I don't know why it hasn't happened. Would be 
nice.

cabal sandboxing is being phased out.  Every blog on cabal sandboxing is 
out of date by definition.  Don't bother.

If your version of cabal-install is >= 3.0, when you issue "build" "run" 
etc they already mean v2-build, v2-run, etc.  I refer you to the correct 
up-to-date cabal user guide, chapter 5 "nix-style local builds", for its 
model.

I would not recommend spending time on the v1 model, unless you're a 
historian.

"new-" was a transitional alias to "v2-" during a past transitional 
period that can be safely ignored (unless you're a historian).

(Historians will remind me that the plan was, one day in the future, 
when the cabal devs introduce a 3rd model, the "new-" prefix will be 
revived again, this time aliasing to the 3rd model.  I say that people 
are so happy with the current 2nd model that it won't happen.)


On 2020-12-11 4:31 a.m., Immanuel Litzroth wrote:
> I found the whole cabal experience confusing and not well documented.
> I kept finding blogs online
> that were not working anymore in my version of cabal ('cabal sandbox
> init', 'cabal init --sandbox'...) when looking
> for advice. I still don't understand the whole v1-build, v2-build,
> new-build and build...
> The manual doesn't seem to have a decent conceptual overview of what
> the tool should do (e.g. an explanation
> of what sandboxing is supposed to achieve, or the 4 build command versions).
> Several of the links on this page https://www.haskell.org/cabal/  are dead
> https://www.haskell.org/cabal/release/cabal-latest/doc/API/Cabal/
> or refer to old versions:
> https://wiki.haskell.org/Upgrading_packages
> 
> This should not be construed as a critique of what has been achieved,
> but as honest feedback
> of my experience.
>> Innovation and advancing comes after competition, why shouldn't we embrace that wrt the tooling of Haskell? Duplication in efforts is a relative smaller problem IMHO.
> Well the competition has "go build" and cargo...
> And duplication of effort is a problem when there's not enough
> resources for even one decent build tool
> Immanuel
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