cabal-install 3.8.1.0 Changelog

Significant changes

• Cabal-3.8.1.0 is used, which brings its own set of changes, many of which are significant.

• Expose cabal-install as library #1597 #3781 #4798 #6090 #7224 #7358

• Split out package cabal-install-solver

• cabal init rewrite #1074 #6758 #6864 #7251 #7255 #7256 #7273

  • Restructures the cabal init command to fix historical issues. All flags are preserved.

    • Codebases for interactive and non-interactive flags are disentangled.
    • Data structures now exploit relevant stanza structure and formatters only care about stanza data.
    • Heuristics and prompts have a pure and impure implementation.

  • Sets default behavior to be --interactive as opposed to --non-interactive.

  • Rewrites tests to achieve 98% coverage

    • Golden files now test every stanza individually.
    • Every flag is covered by a unit test.
    • Interactive, simple, and non-interactive workflows are covered.

• Conditionals and imports in cabal.project files #7556 #7783

  cabal.project files now allow conditional logic on compiler version, arch, etc. as well as imports of other local or remote project of freeze files (both old and new style).

• Changes to cabal v2-configure #5591 #7180 #7405 #7402

  • removes the --dry-run part of the v2-configure command. now the command only generates a cabal.project.local. to get the old functionality back, run cabal v2-build --dry-run after (or instead of, if generating cabal.project.local is not needed) v2-configure
  • add --enable-append and --disable-append flags to v2-configure, which toggle the option for the new configuration to be appended to the old config file
  • add --enable-backup and --disable-backup flags to v2-configure, which toggle the backup feature for the configuration file

• Better support for scripts #5508 #5698 #6149 #6354 #7073 #7842 #7851 #7925 #7938 #7990 #7997

  • Script support improved or added across relevant commands.
  • cabal run script will now cache results and will not do a fresh build every time.
  • cabal build script added: It will build the cache for script.
  • cabal repl script added: It will open a repl for script using the cache if available.
  • cabal clean script added: It will clean the cache for script.
  • cabal clean will now remove script caches for which there is no marching script.
  • cabal list-bin now works with scripts
  • The name of the generated script executable has been changed from "script" to "cabal-script-" for easier process management.
  • Reduce the default verbosity of scripts, so that the build output doesn't interfere with the script output.
  • Scripts now support a project metadata block that allows them to use options that would normally be set in a cabal.project file.

• cabal-install-solver: Backtrack when no pkg-config is present #7448 #7621

  When solving for pkgconfig-depends, when pkg-config is not present, the cabal solver will now backtrack and try a different automatic flag and dependency configuration, just as it does if pkg-config is present, but does not contain the specified package.

• Apply local options only to local packages #7998 #7973

  • Command-line ghc-options only applies to local packages
  • program-options stanza only applies to local packages

• Add --open flag to cabal haddock #7366 #7550

Other changes

• Remove world file functionality #6767 #7746

  In v1-install, world was used to trace what packages have been installed, and re-install everything that is listed in it on-demand. However, in v2-install, this is no longer needed, and outdated. Additionally, world code-path is probably not up-to-date, remove it instead of having partial features.

  • Don't generate world file in ~/.cabal when v1-install is executed.

  • Don't ever read world from ~/.cabal.

  • Remove meta-target world from v1-install.

• A default configuration is no longer written when a config file is given explicitly #7705 #7715

  • When no config file exists, cabal commands will create a default one.

  • This behavior is discontinued now when the config file is given explicitly via the --config-file option or the CABAL_CONFIG environment variable.

  • If no config file is given explicitly, and the default config file (relative to CABAL_DIR) does not exist, it is created as it used to be.

• Use nroff -man | less instead of man as backend for cabal man #7714 #7726

  The previous implementation of cabal man used man as backend to view the generated manpage file. However, macOS' and BSD's man does not accept a file as input, so cabal man was broken on macOS and BSD.

  The issue has been fixed by piping the generated manpage through nroff -man and then into $PAGER which defaults to less. Thus, cabal man now works both on Linux and macOS/BSD.

  NB: cabal man requires nroff to be installed which is the case for standard setups (but may not be case on slim setups like VMs used in CI). Note that nroff is not necessarily a prerequisite of a package containing man.

• Use Win32 >= 2.8 to get Win32.sYNCHRONIZE #7835 #7982

  #7982 also completes a changelog entry for Cabal-3.6.1.0, noting it is required for cabal-install >= 3.6.

• Add preferred-versions support for LocalIndexRepo #7294 #7295

  • Previously, the only repo-index-type that reads the preferred-versions file was RepoRemote. LocalIndexRepo now also supports parsing preferred-versions file, main purpose is to write tests. As a nice side-effect, users can provide their own overlay over package sets to restrict or prefer certain package versions.

• Add preferred-versions support for cabal outdated #5603 #7249 #7296

  • cabal outdated honours the preferred-versions file which might deprecate or prefer certain versions of packages. In particular, if the only newer version of a package has been deprecated, cabal outdated should not report that there are newer versions available.

• Standalone tests for cabal init #7410 #7424

  • change the behaviour of the --tests flag for cabal init, see https://github.com/haskell/cabal/issues/7410#issuecomment-849913926
  • add a new value TestSuite for the PackageType type

• cabal outdated --v2-freeze-file prints error message if no freeze file can be found #7406 #7440

  Instead of ignoring a missing .freeze file, abort execution and print an error message.

• Make cabal respect setgid permission bit when creating directories #7560 #7572

  • Previously cabal would override an admin's choice to use setgid on the .cabal directory by using hardcoded file and directory modes upon creation. Instead we now take what the system decides and only add to that set of permissions.

• Glob expand extra-source-files when tracking for rebuild #4746 #7608

  • Since 3.4, extra-source-files have been tracked by cabal-install in the rebuild-checking logic. However, this tracking did not, until this PR, take into account glob-expansion.

• Improve error message when no test/benchmark is found #5079 #5255 #7834

  When cabal test and the error message recommends setting tests: True, the next cabal test run is likely to fail with a solver error. The user might incorrectly conclude that setting tests: True made the problem worse, because the failure now occurs earlier (at solving time rather than at testing time).

  By including the fact that a plan failure is expected in the error message, hopefully users will be more confident that setting tests: True was the right move, so they will be able to focus on the true cause of the problem: the fact that no plan including the tests exists.

• Remove Distribution.Client.Compat.FilePerms #7948

  • Remove the module Distribution.Client.Compat.FilePerms, since it's both dead code and duplicates code from Distribution.Compat.CopyFile.

• Avoid malformed range requests #5952 #7970

  • Don't send malformed range requests. Should make fetching from head.hackage and other "unstable" overlays more reliable.

• Improve error message for empty --allow-newer= #7740 #8140

  Instead of internal error, the message now explains that empty argument for --allow-newer= is not allowed and reminds what --allow-newer (with the empty argument) means.

• cabal check now fails when no upper bounds for base or Cabal are present in setup dependencies #4683 #5370 #7409

• Fix v2-haddock results in "unexpected status" #6679 #7843

• Fix that cabal v2 commands (install, repl, run) use duplicate global config and rebuild libs twice in the store #6907 #7753 #7759

• --repl-no-load option skips startup modules load in REPL #7541 #7578

• Fix post-checkout-command crash when 0 exit status bug #7641 #7847

• Fix list-bin to only choose the selected component #7679 #7791

• cabal sdist works in projects with extra-packages #7698

• Add -c alias for --constraint command line flag #7765 #7766

• Ensure that v2-sdist command respects the --ignore-project flag #7965 #8109

• Make enable/disable nix flags easier to read #8036 #8054

• Add "prompt" strategy when symlinking binaries. #5672

• Add a verbosity flag +nowarn, to suppress all warnings #7286 #7470

• Lazily decode cache files for checking invalidation #7466 #7516

• Defer build-tools-depends choices as well as setup choices #7532 #7561

• Fix running GHCJS executables #6175 #6361 #7575

• Support Git submodules in source-package-repository #5536 #7625

• Add support for --package-db flags to v2 commands #5773 #7676

• cabal init now takes an optional argument and treats it as root directory for the new package #7871 #7873

• Silence warning about world-file field being unrecognised for flat config files #7894 #7903

• Fix Ctrl-C handling during package download #6322 #7929

• Fix the timestamp shown during cabal update #7934

• Sync darcs repos #7137

• cabal-install-solver: Provide more context in error messages #7468 #7473

  • Error messages for misspelled extensions and languages now provide additional context.
  • The error messages will provide a suggested fix if the misspelled extension or language is similar enough to known languages and extensions.

• cabal init -i should autodetect author name and maintainer email (fix #8255) #8255 #8267

• cabal init -i: add the GHC2021 language option #8265 #8277

• Automatically pipe auth from repo uris into curl transport. #4743 #7630

• Build release archives (and validate) with GHC 9.2.3 #8271 #8272

  • The release binaries are now built with GHC 9.2.3, which fixes some minor snags

Internal changes

• Remove bootstrapping plan files from version control, and simplify bootstrap update Makefile targets. #7949

• CI setup

  • Remove Travis scripts #6959