upgrade global packages

[legrostdg]

There should be a way to upgrade globally installed packages (other than running "stack install mypackage" for each package).

[mgsloan]

I don't understand what you want that stack install mypackage does not provide.

Note that you can do stack install mypackage-1.0 to specify a specific version.

Feel free to reopen with more explanation. If this is about the global package DB, we want to avoid mutating that as it's shared amongst all uses of the compiler.

[legrostdg]

I mean something like "npm upgrade -g": upgrade all the global packages, without having to do "stack install package1", "stack install package2", etc. to upgrade everything

[mgsloan]

Ah, I see! Yes, others have wanted this as well - see the discussion here for why stack isn't really intended for this usecase, and how to use it for this.

I've opened an issue with a potential way to streamline this usecase - #1904 . Shouldn't be very hard, but I think some other things should happen first. Essentially the only convenience this grants is that the stack.yaml can now keep track of which hackage packages to install when you do stack install. Without the change in the ticket, you'll need to list which packages to install on the commandline. However, automating that is as easy as writing a little script:

#!/bin/sh
stack install package1 package2

If you are fine with skipping out on having the resolver determine the package version (such that specifying lens will use the right version, no need to figure out the version), then you could also already use hackage tarball locations in your packages list or git repos in your packages list.

[flip111]

Is there any way to get a list of packages that get loaded when you are not in a project (but in global project instead)? Is it then from there possible to remove all dependencies from that list? That way you only get the packages of which you would need to type stack install package to update them.

[mgsloan]

@flip111 Not sure I follow. The global project works exactly like a normal project, except that by default it has no local packages.

It sounds like what y'all want here is #115 - having commands that automatically modify a project configuration. We could do this now, however, there's no good way to do it that preserves existing layout and comments

[flip111]

@mgsloan in the other discussion you say

There is no special tracking of which packages you've installed.

However when i run stack exec ghci i can import packages that at some point in time where installed with stack install package. But also dependencies of those package would have been installed.

For example, i stack install a which depends on b and n and i stack install x which depends on y and n. Now when i start stack exec ghci i can import packages a, b, n, x and y right?

Can i get this list a, b, n, x, y somehow? Can i then backwards figure out that only a and x where "top-level" packages (or whatever is an appropriate name here) and the rest are dependencies? If i get back a and x i can then run stack install a x to upgrade my global project.

It's just an idea .. not sure if this will work ..

[mgsloan]

True, stack exec ghci does let you access packages that you've installed. This is one thing that's rather nice about stack's approach to package DBs, which I believe that the new-build nix style cannot support.

stack exec -- ghc-pkg list may give you what you're looking for, as far as getting the full list. However, stack does not write down what has been asked for explicitly via install.

Also, note that for most packages build is the exact same as install. The only difference is if the package has an executable, install copies it into ~/.local/bin.

[mgsloan]

You probably want to ignore packages from the global package DB (stuff that comes with GHC). You can do this by running the following two commands in bash:

stack exec -- ghc-pkg list --package-db=$(stack path --snapshot-pkg-db)
stack exec -- ghc-pkg list --package-db=$(stack path --local-pkg-db)

[flip111]

thx @mgsloan next time i want to upgrade my global project i'll use that to grab the package list before i update the resolver

stack exec -- ghc-pkg list --package-db=$(stack path --local-pkg-db) | tail -n+2 | head -n-1 | sed -E -e 's/\s*([a-z-]+)-.*/\1/' | tr '\n' ' '