installing non-haskell binaries with cabal

Jonathan Cast jonathanccast at fastmail.fm
Mon Jun 9 19:37:55 EDT 2008


On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 16:22 -0700, Don Stewart wrote:
> 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.

Yikes.  Every time I learn something new about Cabal, it's /always/ some
new limitation, never a new feature.  Are there any plans to someday
permit doing things with Cabal the Cabal developers haven't added
specific code for yet?

jcc




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