Toplevel alias for "cabal install --install-dependencies"

[tel]

One of the most frequent cabal-install command I use is cabal install --only-dependencies. While conceptually it makes sense to have this option under the install mode, it's somewhat inconvenient. I'd like for cabal deps to be an alias for cabal install --only-dependencies.

Compare, say, Bundler from the Rubygem ecosystem where the default command bundle creates and updates a local sandbox directly. It's a compelling workflow: git clone xxx; bundle.

If this were to happen, it would need to accept further command-line flags such as cabal deps --enable-tests -j2.

[23Skidoo]

I think that a better solution is instead of special-casing install --only-dependencies to support command aliases (#1089).

Note also that you can save a few keystrokes by using --only-dep instead of --only-dependencies.

[tel]

I agree completely. That subsumes my solution and need in a pretty flexible way.

[tibbe]

It's my intention for cabal build to pull in any needed dependencies, starting with the next major release. Then we'll have

cabal sandbox init
cabal build

[tel]

That'd be quite nice, too. Would there still be a "build according to the current packages" command? I'm imagining an edge case where unexpected package upgrades occur due to underspecification.

Joseph

On Fri, Sep 6, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Johan Tibell [email protected]
wrote:

It's my intention for cabal build to pull in any needed dependencies, starting with the next major release. Then we'll have

cabal sandbox init
cabal build

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#1484 (comment)

[tibbe]

We're handling that issue differently. There's now an option to put a cabal.config file in the package directory which can include a constraints section where you can lock down package versions. I believe this is similar to Ruby's gemlock files. Does this address your use case? If so we can close this issue.

[tel]

Yeah, it sounds like this feature is already well covered. Glad to hear it and thanks for the great work Cabal maintainers 👍

[23Skidoo]

Closing as duplicate of #1100 and #1089. Please reopen if you disagree.