Support of passing flags to arbitrary programs

[PierreVDL]

On haskell-stack different questions are asked to add arguments to particular programs.
See e.g. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/haskell-stack/6sYk9V5IuNI
and https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/haskell-stack/9oKeSo-nz7U

Cabal states it can accept arguments to arbitrary programs : https://www.haskell.org/cabal/users-guide/installing-packages.html#programs-used-for-building

--prog-options=options Specify additional options to the program prog. Any program known to Cabal can be used in place of prog. For example: --alex-options="--template=mytemplatedir/".

Can stack support this as well?

[decentral1se]

Don't think this is supported yet.

[tiansivive]

I guess this is still an issue? I'm trying to pass some args to happy on running stack build and running into this.

It's been 5 years, I'll just assume this died in backlog hell?

[mpilgrem]

@tiansivive, it is still an unfulfilled request. (Note to self: the modern Cabal link is https://cabal.readthedocs.io/en/stable/setup-commands.html#programs-used-for-building.) EDIT: On a quick initial review, it looks like a sensible thing to have and perhaps it is not too difficult to implement, as long as it is compatible with the oldest version of Cabal that Stack still supports.

EDIT: Cabal-3.10.1.0 has the following built-in programs:

-- compilers and related
ghc  -- Stack has --ghc-options
ghc-pkg
ghcjs -- Stack has not support GHCJS since Stack 2.3.1
ghcjs-pkg
haskell-suite
haskell-suite-pkg
hmake
hpc -- Stack has stack hpc
jhc
runghc -- Stack has stack runghc. Not present in Cabal-1.22.5.0
uhc
-- configuration tools
pkg-config
-- preprocessors
alex
c2hs
cpphs
doctest -- Not present in Cabal-1.22.5.0
greencard
haddock  -- Stack has --haddock-arguments
happy
hsc2hs
hscolour
-- platform toolchain (GNU)
ar  -- create, modify, and extract from archives
gcc -- C/C++ compiler
ld -- linker
strip -- discards symbols and other data from object files
tar -- saves many files together

[mpilgrem]

@tiansivive, I think the version of Stack in branch fix2868 now adds what you are seeking to the command line. See #6083. I have reasoned that it works, but could you test that it actually solves your problem (or specify some minimal example that I could use to test it)?

If it does work, I'll merge it and then turn to adding something also to Stack's YAML configuration files separately.

[mpilgrem]

Re-opening issue, as I have realised that 9ebe1fc does not address the hash that ensures builds are reproducible. I'll address that separately.