installing non-haskell binaries with cabal

[Don Stewart]

gwern0:
> On 2008.06.09 23:36:19 +0100, Duncan Coutts <duncan.coutts at worc.ox.ac.uk> scribbled 0.5K characters:
> >
> > On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 23:35 +0200, Misha Aizatulin wrote:
> > > hello,
> > >
> > >    I would like to distribute a shell script as part of my haskell
> > > project. How can I tell cabal to install the script as an executable?
> >
> > At the moment there is no easy way of doing that. It can be installed as
> > a data file pretty easily but not into the $bindir.
> >
> > You'd have to write a custom Setup.hs script and change the postInst
> > hook. Use LocalBuildInfo.absoluteInstallDirs to get the bindir.
> >
> > Duncan
> 
> And of course, at that point, you'd be better off just writing the script in Haskell.
> 
> (Seriously, I had to do that for the Roguestar packages. It was hardly
> any trouble at all - Haskell is a better scripting language than I
> think people give it credit for.)

I'd agree here. It probably is easier to rewrite it in Haskell (just use
system everywhere), and keep easy distribution via cabal-install.

-- Don