installing non-haskell binaries with cabal

[Jonathan Cast]

On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 11:08 +0100, Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 16:37 -0700, Jonathan Cast wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 16:22 -0700, Don Stewart wrote:
> > > gwern0:
> > > > 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?
> 
> All these things are already possible (if not easy) using custom code in
> the Setup.hs script and/or using a ./configure script.

I assume the claim above about cabal-install failing to install such a
package is incorrect, right?

Beyond which, to paraphrase what I tell my boss at work, I can get
Setup.lhs to do anything I want, it's written in a Turing-complete
language.  But I'd rather not use a tool I'm going to have to fight.

jcc