Cabal

A framework for packaging Haskell software

http://www.haskell.org/cabal/

Version on this page:3.0.1.0
LTS Haskell 24.18:3.12.1.0
Stackage Nightly 2025-11-04:3.14.1.0
Latest on Hackage:3.16.0.0

See all snapshots Cabal appears in

BSD-3-Clause licensed by Cabal Development Team
Maintained by [email protected]
This version can be pinned in stack with:Cabal-3.0.1.0@sha256:2e08d9183dc95bf71686e7216873f2f49b5a6a3ab01f44db0025035c3f63b9aa,26714

Module documentation for 3.0.1.0

The Cabal library package

See the Cabal web site for more information.

If you also want the cabal command-line program, you need the cabal-install package in addition to this library.

Installing the Cabal library

If you already have the cabal program

In this case run:

$ cabal install

However, if you do not have an existing version of the cabal program, you first must install the Cabal library. To avoid this bootstrapping problem, you can install the Cabal library directly as described below.

Installing as a user (no root or administrator access)

ghc -threaded --make Setup
./Setup configure --user
./Setup build
./Setup install

Note the use of the --user flag at the configure step.

Compiling ‘Setup’ rather than using runghc Setup is much faster and works on Windows. For all packages other than Cabal itself, it is fine to use runghc.

This will install into $HOME/.cabal/ on Unix and into Documents and Settings\$User\Application Data\cabal\ on Windows. If you want to install elsewhere, use the --prefix= flag at the configure step.

Installing as root or Administrator

ghc -threaded --make Setup
./Setup configure
./Setup build
sudo ./Setup install

Compiling Setup rather than using runghc Setup is much faster and works on Windows. For all packages other than Cabal itself, it is fine to use runghc.

This will install into /usr/local on Unix, and on Windows it will install into $ProgramFiles/Haskell. If you want to install elsewhere, use the --prefix= flag at the configure step.

Using older versions of GHC and Cabal

It is recommended that you leave any pre-existing version of Cabal installed. In particular, it is essential you keep the version that came with GHC itself, since other installed packages require it (for instance, the “ghc” API package).

Prior to GHC 6.4.2, however, GHC did not deal particularly well with having multiple versions of packages installed at once. So if you are using GHC 6.4.1 or older and you have an older version of Cabal installed, you should probably remove it by running:

$ ghc-pkg unregister Cabal

or, if you had Cabal installed only for your user account, run:

$ ghc-pkg unregister Cabal --user

The filepath dependency

Cabal uses the filepath package, so it must be installed first. GHC version 6.6.1 and later come with filepath, however, earlier versions do not by default. If you do not already have filepath, you need to install it. You can use any existing version of Cabal to do that. If you have neither Cabal nor filepath, it is slightly harder but still possible.

Unpack Cabal and filepath into separate directories. For example:

tar -xzf filepath-1.1.0.0.tar.gz
tar -xzf Cabal-1.6.0.0.tar.gz

# rename to make the following instructions simpler:
mv filepath-1.1.0.0/ filepath/
mv Cabal-1.6.0.0/ Cabal/

cd Cabal
ghc -i../filepath -cpp --make Setup.hs -o ../filepath/setup
cd ../filepath/
./setup configure --user
./setup build
./setup install

This installs filepath so that you can install Cabal with the normal method.

More information

Please see the Cabal web site for the user guide and API documentation. There is additional information available on the development wiki.

Bugs

Please report bugs and feature requests to Cabal’s bug tracker.

Your help

To help Cabal’s development, it is enormously helpful to know from Cabal’s users what their most pressing problems are with Cabal and Hackage. You may have a favourite Cabal bug or limitation. Look at Cabal’s bug tracker. Ensure that the problem is reported there and adequately described. Comment on the issue to report how much of a problem the bug is for you. Subscribe to the issues’s notifications to discussed requirements and keep informed on progress. For feature requests, it is helpful if there is a description of how you would expect to interact with the new feature.

Source code

You can get the master development branch using:

$ git clone https://github.com/haskell/cabal.git

Credits

See the AUTHORS file.

Authors of the original Cabal specification:

  • Isaac Jones
  • Simon Marlow
  • Ross Patterson
  • Simon Peyton Jones
  • Malcolm Wallace

Changes

3.0.1.0 Herbert Valerio Riedel April 2020

  • Add GHC-8.8 flags to normaliseGhcFlags (#6379).
  • Typo fixes (#6372).
  • Limit version number parts to contain at most 9 digits (#6386).
  • Fix boundless sublibrary depedency parse failure (#5846).
  • cabal check verifies cpp-options more pedantically, allowing only options starting with -D and -U.
  • Don’t rebuild world when new ghc flags that affect how error messages are presented is specified.
  • Fix dropExeExtension behaviour on Windows (#6287).

3.0.0.0 Mikhail Glushenkov August 2019

  • The 3.0 migration guide gives advice on adapting Custom setup scripts to backwards-incompatible changes in this release: https://github.com/haskell/cabal/wiki/3.0-migration-guide.
  • Due to #5119, the cabal check warning for bounds on internal libraries has been disabled.
  • Introduce set notation for ^>= and == operators (#5906).
  • ‘check’ reports warnings for various ghc-*-options fields separately (#5342).
  • KnownExtension: added new extensions DerivingVia and EmptyDataDeriving.
  • Add extra-dynamic-library-flavours, to specify extra dynamic library flavours to build and install from a .cabal file.
  • autoconfUserHooks now passes --host=$HOST when cross-compiling
  • Introduce multiple public libraries feature (#5526).
    • New build-depends syntax
    • Add a set of library components to the Dependency datatype
    • New visibility field in the library stanza
    • New LibraryVisibility field in InstalledPackageInfo
    • New syntax for the --dependency Cabal flag
  • Static linking
    • Add --enable-executable-static flag for building fully static executables (GHC’s normal “statish” linking links Haskell libraries statically, but libc and system dependencies dynamically). This new flag links everything statically.
    • Note you likely want to link against musl or another libc that supports fully static linking; glibc has some issues with fully static linking.
  • Fix corrupted config file header for non-ASCII package names (2557).
  • Extend Distribution.Simple.Utils.rewriteFileEx from ASCII to UTF-8 encoding.
  • Change the arguments of Newtype class to better suit @DeriveAnyClass@ usage, add default implementation in terms of coerce / unsafeCoerce.
  • Implement support for response file arguments to defaultMain* and cabal-install.
  • Uniformly provide ‘Semigroup’ instances for base < 4.9 via semigroups package
  • Implement `{cmm,asm}-{sources,options} buildinfo fields for separate compilation of C– and ASM source files (#6033).
  • Setting debug-info now implies library-stripping: False and `executable-stripping: False) (#2702)
  • Setup.hs copy and install now work in the presence of data-files that use ** syntax (#6125).

2.4.1.1 Mikhail Glushenkov December 2018

  • Fix --with-compiler failing to locate compiler on Windows (#5753).
  • Cabal can once again be built with GHC 7.8 and 7.6 (#5730).

2.4.1.0 Mikhail Glushenkov November 2018

  • Warnings in autogenerated files are now silenced (#5678).
  • Improved recompilation avoidance, especially when using GHC 8.6 (#5589).
  • Do not error on empty packagedbs in getInstalledPackages (#5516).

2.4.0.1 Mikhail Glushenkov September 2018

  • Allow arguments to be passed to Setup.hs haddock for build-type:configure (#5503).

2.4.0.0 Mikhail Glushenkov September 2018

  • Due to #5119, the cabal check warning for bounds on internal libraries has been disabled.
  • Distribution.Simple.Haddock now checks to ensure that it does not erroneously call Haddock with no target modules. (#5232, #5459).
  • Add getting (less general than to) Lens combinator, non) and an optics to access the modules in a component of a PackageDescription by the ComponentName: componentBuildInfo and componentModules
  • Linker ld-options are now passed to GHC as -optl options (#4925).
  • Add readGhcEnvironmentFile to parse GHC environment files.
  • Drop support for GHC 7.4, since it is out of our support window (and has been for over a year!)
  • Deprecate preSDist, sDistHook, and postSDist in service of new-sdist, since they violate key invariants of the new-build ecosystem. Use autogen-modules and build-tool-depends instead. (#5389).
  • Added --repl-options flag to Setup repl used to pass flags to the underlying repl without affecting the LocalBuildInfo (#4247, #5287)
  • KnownExtension: added new extensions BlockArguments (#5101), NumericUnderscores (#5130, QuantifiedConstraints, and StarIsType.
  • buildDepends is removed from PackageDescription. It had long been uselessly hanging about as top-level build-depends already got put into per-component condition trees anyway. Now it’s finally been put out of its misery (#4383).
  • Added Eta to CompilerFlavor and to known compilers.
  • cabal haddock now generates per-component documentation (#5226).
  • Wildcard improvements:
    • Allow ** wildcards in data-files, extra-source-files and extra-doc-files. These allow a limited form of recursive matching, and require cabal-version: 2.4. (#5284, #3178, et al.)
    • With cabal-version: 2.4, when matching a wildcard, the requirement for the full extension to match exactly has been loosened. Instead, if the wildcard’s extension is a suffix of the file’s extension, the file will be selected. For example, previously foo.en.html would not match *.html, and foo.solaris.tar.gz would not match *.tar.gz, but now both do. This may lead to files unexpectedly being included by sdist; please audit your package descriptions if you rely on this behaviour to keep sensitive data out of distributed packages (#5372, #784, #5057).
    • Wildcard syntax errors (misplaced *, etc), wildcards that refer to missing directoies, and wildcards that do not match anything are now all detected by cabal check.
    • Wildcard (‘globbing’) functions have been moved from Distribution.Simple.Utils to Distribution.Simple.Glob and have been refactored.
  • Fixed cxx-options and cxx-sources buildinfo fields for separate compilation of C++ source files to correctly build and link non-library components (#5309).
  • Reduced warnings generated by hsc2hs and c2hs when cxx-options field is present in a component.
  • cabal check now warns if -j is used in ghc-options in a Cabal file. (#5277)
  • install-includes now works as expected with foreign libraries (#5302).
  • Removed support for JHC.
  • Options listed in ghc-options, cc-options, ld-options, cxx-options, cpp-options are not deduplicated anymore (#4449).
  • Deprecated cabal hscolour in favour of cabal haddock --hyperlink-source (#5236).
  • Recognize powerpc64le as architecture PPC64.
  • Cabal now deduplicates more -I and -L and flags to avoid E2BIG (#5356).
  • With build-type: configure, avoid using backslashes to delimit path components on Windows and warn about other unsafe characters in the path to the source directory on all platforms (#5386).
  • Distribution.PackageDescription.Check.checkPackageFiles now accepts a Verbosity argument.
  • Added a parameter to Distribution.Backpack.ConfiguredComponent.toConfiguredComponent in order to fix #5409.
  • Partially silence abi-depends warnings (#5465).
  • Foreign libraries are now linked against the threaded RTS when the ‘ghc-options: -threaded’ flag is used (#5431).
  • Pass command line arguments to hsc2hs using response files when possible (#3122).

2.2.0.1 Mikhail Glushenkov March 2018

  • Fix checkPackageFiles for relative directories (#5206)

2.2.0.0 Mikhail Glushenkov March 2018

  • The 2.2 migration guide gives advice on adapting Custom setup scripts to backwards-incompatible changes in this release: https://github.com/haskell/cabal/wiki/2.2-migration-guide.
  • New Parsec-based parser for .cabal files is now the default. This brings memory consumption and speed improvements, as well as making new syntax extensions easier to implement.
  • Support for common stanzas (#4751).
  • Added elif-conditionals to .cabal syntax (#4750).
  • The package license information can now be specified using the SPDX syntax. This requires setting cabal-version to 2.2+ (#2547, #5050).
  • Support for GHC’s numeric -g debug levels (#4673).
  • Compilation with section splitting is now supported via the --enable-split-sections flag (#4819)
  • Fields with mandatory commas (e.g. build-depends) may now have a leading or a trailing comma (either one, not both) (#4953)
  • Added virtual-modules field, to allow modules that are not built but registered (#4875).
  • Use better defaulting for build-type; rename PackageDescription’s buildType field to buildTypeRaw and introduce new buildType function (#4958)
  • D.T.PackageDescription.allBuildInfo now returns all build infos, not only for buildable components (#5087).
  • Removed UnknownBuildType constructor from BuildType (#5003).
  • Added HexFloatLiterals to KnownExtension.
  • Cabal will no longer try to build an empty set of inputModules (#4890).
  • copyComponent and installIncludeFiles will now look for include headers in the build directory (dist/build/... by default) as well (#4866).
  • Added cxx-options and cxx-sources buildinfo fields for separate compilation of C++ source files (#3700).
  • Removed unused --allow-newer/--allow-older support from Setup configure (#4527).
  • Changed FlagAssignment to be an opaque newtype (#4849).
  • Changed rawSystemStdInOut to use proper type to represent binary and textual data; new Distribution.Utils.IOData module; removed obsolete startsWithBOM, fileHasBOM, fromUTF8, and toUTF8 functions; add new toUTF8BS/toUTF8LBS encoding functions. (#4666)
  • Added a cabal check warning when the .cabal file name does not match package name (#4592).
  • The ar program now receives its arguments via a response file (@file). Old behaviour can be restored with --disable-response-files argument to configure or install (#4596).
  • Added .Lens modules, with optics for package description data types (#4701).
  • Support for building with Win32 version 2.6 (#4835).
  • Change compilerExtensions and ghcOptExtensionMap to contain Maybe Flags, since a supported extension can lack a flag (#4443).
  • Pretty-printing of .cabal files is slightly different due to parser changes. For an example, see https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/cabal-devel/2017-December/010414.html.
  • --hyperlink-source now uses Haddock’s hyperlinker backend when Haddock is new enough, falling back to HsColour otherwise.
  • D.S.defaultHookedPackageDesc has been deprecated in favour of D.S.findHookedPackageDesc (#4874).
  • D.S.getHookedBuildInfo now takes an additional parameter specifying the build directory path (#4874).
  • Emit warning when encountering unknown GHC versions (#415).

2.0.1.1 Mikhail Glushenkov December 2017

  • Don’t pass other-modules to stub executable for detailed-0.9 (#4918).
  • Hpc: Use relative .mix search paths (#4917).

2.0.1.0 Mikhail Glushenkov November 2017

  • Support for GHC’s numeric -g debug levels (#4673).
  • Added a new Distribution.Verbosity.modifyVerbosity combinator (#4724).
  • Added a new cabal check warning about unused, undeclared or non-Unicode flags. Also, it warns about leading dash, which is unusable but accepted if it’s unused in conditionals. (#4687)
  • Modify allBuildInfo to include foreign library info (#4763).
  • Documentation fixes.

2.0.0.2 Mikhail Glushenkov July 2017

  • See http://coldwa.st/e/blog/2017-09-09-Cabal-2-0.html for more detailed release notes.
  • The 2.0 migration guide gives advice on adapting Custom setup scripts to backwards-incompatible changes in this release: https://github.com/haskell/cabal/wiki/2.0-migration-guide
  • Add CURRENT_PACKAGE_VERSION to cabal_macros.h (#4319)
  • Dropped support for versions of GHC earlier than 6.12 (#3111).
  • GHC compatibility window for the Cabal library has been extended to five years (#3838).
  • Convenience/internal libraries are now supported (#269). An internal library is declared using the stanza library 'libname'. Packages which use internal libraries can result in multiple registrations; thus --gen-pkg-config can now output a directory of registration scripts rather than a single file.
  • Backwards incompatible change to preprocessor interface: the function in PPSuffixHandler now takes an additional ComponentLocalBuildInfo specifying the build information of the component being preprocessed.
  • Backwards incompatible change to cabal_macros.h (#1893): we now generate a macro file for each component which contains only information about the direct dependencies of that component. Consequently, dist/build/autogen/cabal_macros.h contains only the macros for the library, and is not generated if a package has no library; to find the macros for an executable named foobar, look in dist/build/foobar/autogen/cabal_macros.h. Similarly, if you used autogenModulesDir you should now use autogenComponentModulesDir, which now requires a ComponentLocalBuildInfo argument as well in order to disambiguate which component the autogenerated files are for.
  • Backwards incompatible change to Component: TestSuite and Benchmark no longer have testEnabled and benchmarkEnabled. If you used enabledTests or enabledBenchmarks, please instead use enabledTestLBIs and enabledBenchLBIs (you will need a LocalBuildInfo for these functions.) Additionally, the semantics of withTest and withBench have changed: they now iterate over all buildable such components, regardless of whether or not they have been enabled; if you only want enabled components, use withTestLBI and withBenchLBI. finalizePackageDescription is deprecated: its replacement finalizePD now takes an extra argument ComponentRequestedSpec which specifies what components are to be enabled: use this instead of modifying the Component in a GenericPackageDescription. (As it’s not possible now, finalizePackageDescription will assume tests/benchmarks are disabled.) If you only need to test if a component is buildable (i.e., it is marked buildable in the Cabal file) use the new function componentBuildable.
  • Backwards incompatible change to PackageName (#3896): PackageName is now opaque; conversion to/from String now works via (old) unPackageName and (new) mkPackageName functions.
  • Backwards incompatible change to ComponentId (#3917): ComponentId is now opaque; conversion to/from String now works via unComponentId and mkComponentId functions.
  • Backwards incompatible change to AbiHash (#3921): AbiHash is now opaque; conversion to/from String now works via unAbiHash and mkAbiHash functions.
  • Backwards incompatible change to FlagName (#4062): FlagName is now opaque; conversion to/from String now works via unFlagName and mkFlagName functions.
  • Backwards incompatible change to Version (#3905): Version is now opaque; conversion to/from [Int] now works via versionNumbers and mkVersion functions.
  • Add support for --allow-older (dual to --allow-newer) (#3466)
  • Improved an error message for process output decoding errors (#3408).
  • getComponentLocalBuildInfo, withComponentsInBuildOrder and componentsInBuildOrder are deprecated in favor of a new interface in Distribution.Types.LocalBuildInfo.
  • New autogen-modules field. Modules that are built automatically at setup, like Paths_PACKAGENAME or others created with a build-type custom, appear on other-modules for the Library, Executable, Test-Suite or Benchmark stanzas or also on exposed-modules for libraries but are not really on the package when distributed. This makes commands like sdist fail because the file is not found, so with this new field modules that appear there are treated the same way as Paths_PACKAGENAME was and there is no need to create complex build hooks. Just add the module names on other-modules and exposed-modules as always and on the new autogen-modules besides. (#3656).
  • New ./Setup configure flag --cabal-file, allowing multiple .cabal files in a single directory (#3553). Primarily intended for internal use.
  • Macros in cabal_macros.h are now ifndef’d, so that they don’t cause an error if the macro is already defined. (#3041)
  • ./Setup configure now accepts a single argument specifying the component to be configured. The semantics of this mode of operation are described in https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/4
  • Internal build-tools dependencies are now added to PATH upon invocation of GHC, so that they can be conveniently used via -pgmF. (#1541)
  • Add support for new caret-style version range operator ^>= (#3705)
  • Verbosity -v now takes an extended format which allows specifying exactly what you want to be logged. The format is [silent|normal|verbose|debug] flags, where flags is a space separated list of flags. At the moment, only the flags +callsite and +callstack are supported; these report the call site/stack of a logging output respectively (these are only supported if Cabal is built with GHC 8.0/7.10.2 or greater, respectively).
  • New Distribution.Utils.ShortText.ShortText type for representing short text strings compactly (#3898)
  • Cabal no longer supports using a version bound to disambiguate between an internal and external package (#4020). This should not affect many people, as this mode of use already did not work with the dependency solver.
  • Support for “foreign libraries” (#2540), which are Haskell libraries intended to be used by foreign languages like C. Foreign libraries only work with GHC 7.8 and later.
  • Added a technical preview version of integrated doctest support (#4480).
  • Added a new scope field to the executable stanza. Executables with scope: private get installed into $libexecdir/$libexecsubdir. Additionally $libexecdir now has a subdir structure similar to $lib(sub)dir to allow installing private executables of different packages and package versions alongside one another. Private executables are those that are expected to be run by other programs rather than users. (#3461)

1.24.2.0 Mikhail Glushenkov December 2016

  • Fixed a bug in the handling of non-buildable components (#4094).
  • Reverted a PVP-noncompliant API change in 1.24.1.0 (#4123).
  • Bumped the directory upper bound to < 1.4 (#4158).

1.24.1.0 Ryan Thomas October 2016

  • API addition: differenceVersionRanges (#3519).
  • Fixed reexported-modules display mangling (#3928).
  • Check that the correct cabal-version is specified when the extra-doc-files field is present (#3825).
  • Fixed an incorrect invocation of GetShortPathName that was causing build failures on Windows (#3649).
  • Linker flags are now set correctly on GHC >= 7.8 (#3443).

1.24.0.0 Ryan Thomas March 2016

  • Support GHC 8.
  • Deal with extra C sources from preprocessors (#238).
  • Include cabal_macros.h when running c2hs (#2600).
  • Don’t recompile C sources unless needed (#2601).
  • Read builddir option from CABAL_BUILDDIR environment variable.
  • Add --profiling-detail=$level flag with a default for libraries and executables of exported-functions and toplevel-functions respectively (GHC’s -fprof-auto-{exported,top} flags) (#193).
  • New custom-setup stanza to specify setup deps. Setup is also built with the cabal_macros.h style macros, for conditional compilation.
  • Support Haddock response files (#2746).
  • Fixed a bug in the Text instance for Platform (#2862).
  • New setup haddock option: --for-hackage (#2852).
  • New --show-detail=direct; like streaming, but allows the test program to detect that is connected to a terminal, and works reliable with a non-threaded runtime (#2911, and serves as a work-around for #2398)
  • Library support for multi-instance package DBs (#2948).
  • Improved the ./Setup configure solver (#3082, #3076).
  • The --allow-newer option can be now used with ./Setup configure (#3163).
  • Added a way to specify extra locations to find OS X frameworks in (extra-framework-dirs). Can be used both in .cabal files and as an argument to ./Setup configure (#3158).
  • Macros VERSION_$pkgname and MIN_VERSION_$pkgname are now also generated for the current package. (#3235).
  • Backpack is supported! Two new fields supported in Cabal files: signatures and mixins; and a new flag to setup scripts, --instantiate-with. See https://github.com/ezyang/ghc-proposals/blob/backpack/proposals/0000-backpack.rst for more details.

1.22.8.0 Ryan Thomas March 2016

  • Distribution.Simple.Setup: remove job cap. Fixes #3191.
  • Check all object file suffixes for recompilation. Fixes #3128.
  • Move source files under src/. Fixes #3003.

1.22.7.0 Ryan Thomas January 2016

  • Backport #3012 to the 1.22 branch
  • Cabal.cabal: change build-type to Simple
  • Add foldl’ import
  • The Cabal part for fully gcc-like response files

1.22.6.0 Ryan Thomas December 2015

  • Relax upper bound to allow upcoming binary-0.8

1.22.5.0 Ryan Thomas November 2015

  • Don’t recompile C sources unless needed (#2601). (Luke Iannini)
  • Support Haddock response files.
  • Add frameworks when linking a dynamic library.

1.22.4.0 Ryan Thomas June 2015

  • Add libname install-dirs variable, use it by default. Fixes #2437. (Edward Z. Yang)
  • Reduce temporary directory name length, fixes #2502. (Edward Z. Yang)
  • Workaround for #2527. (Mikhail Glushenkov)

1.22.3.0 Ryan Thomas April 2015

  • Fix for the ghcjs-pkg version number handling (Luite Stegeman)
  • filterConfigureFlags: filter more flags (Mikhail Glushenkov)
  • Cabal check will fail on -fprof-auto passed as a ghc-option - Fixes #2479 (John Chee)

1.22.2.0 Ryan Thomas March 2015

  • Don’t pass --{en,dis}able-profiling to old setup.
  • Add -Wall police
  • Fix dependencies on old-time
  • Fix test interface detailed-0.9 with GHC 7.10
  • Fix HPC tests with GHC 7.10
  • Make sure to pass the package key to ghc
  • Use --package-{name|version} when available for Haddock when available
  • Put full package name and version in library names
  • Fully specify package key format, so external tools can generate it.

1.22.0.0 Johan Tibell January 2015

  • Support GHC 7.10.
  • Experimental support for emitting DWARF debug info.
  • Preliminary support for relocatable packages.
  • Allow cabal to be used inside cabal exec environments.
  • hpc: support multiple “ways” (e.g. profiling and vanilla).
  • Support GHCJS.
  • Improved command line documentation.
  • Add -none constraint syntax for version ranges (#2093).
  • Make the default doc index file path compiler/arch/os-dependent (#2136).
  • Warn instead of dying when generating documentation and hscolour isn’t installed (455f51622fa38347db62197a04bb0fa5b928ff17).
  • Support the new BinaryLiterals extension (1f25ab3c5eff311ada73c6c987061b80e9bbebd9).
  • Warn about ghc-prof-options: -auto-all in cabal check (#2162).
  • Add preliminary support for multiple instances of the same package version installed side-by-side (#2002).
  • New binary build config format - faster build times (#2076).
  • Support module thinning and renaming (#2038).
  • Add a new license type: UnspecifiedLicense (#2141).
  • Remove support for Hugs and nhc98 (#2168).
  • Invoke tar with --formar ustar if possible in sdist (#1903).
  • Replace --enable-library-coverage with --enable-coverage, which enables program coverage for all components (#1945).
  • Suggest that ExitFailure 9 is probably due to memory exhaustion (#1522).
  • Drop support for Haddock < 2.0 (#1808, #1718).
  • Make cabal test/cabal bench build only what’s needed for running tests/benchmarks (#1821).
  • Build shared libraries by default when linking executables dynamically.
  • Build profiled libraries by default when profiling executables.

1.20.0.4 Ryan Thomas January 2016

  • Cabal.cabal: change build-type to Simple.

1.20.0.1 Johan Tibell May 2014

  • Fix streaming test output.

1.20.0.0 Johan Tibell April 2014

  • Rewrite user guide
  • Fix repl Ctrl+C handling
  • Add haskell-suite compiler support
  • Add HADDOCK_VERSION define
  • Allow specifying exact dependency version using hash
  • Rename extra-html-files to extra-doc-files
  • Add parallel build support for GHC 7.8 and later
  • Don’t call ranlib on OS X
  • Avoid re-linking executables, test suites, and benchmarks unnecessarily, shortening build times
  • Add --allow-newer which allows upper version bounds to be ignored
  • Add --enable-library-stripping
  • Add command for freezing dependencies
  • Allow repl to be used outside Cabal packages
  • Add --require-sandbox
  • Don’t use --strip-unneeded on OS X or iOS
  • Add new license-files field got additional licenses
  • Fix if(solaris) on some Solaris versions
  • Don’t use -dylib-install-name on OS X with GHC > 7.8
  • Add DragonFly as a known OS
  • Improve pretty-printing of Cabal files
  • Add test flag --show-details=streaming for real-time test output
  • Add exec command

1.10.2.0 Duncan Coutts June 2011

  • Include test suites in cabal sdist
  • Fix for conditionals in test suite stanzas in .cabal files
  • Fix permissions of directories created during install
  • Fix for global builds when $HOME env var is not set

1.10.1.0 Duncan Coutts February 2011

  • Improved error messages when test suites are not enabled
  • Template parameters allowed in test --test-option(s) flag
  • Improved documentation of the test feature
  • Relaxed QA check on cabal-version when using test-suite sections
  • haddock command now allows both --hoogle and --html at the same time
  • Find ghc-version-specific instances of the hsc2hs program
  • Preserve file executable permissions in sdist tarballs
  • Pass gcc location and flags to ./configure scripts
  • Get default gcc flags from ghc

1.10.0.0 Duncan Coutts November 2010

  • New cabal test feature
  • Initial support for UHC
  • New default-language and other-languages fields (e.g. Haskell98/2010)
  • New default-extensions and other-extensions fields
  • Deprecated extensions field (for packages using cabal-version >=1.10)
  • Cabal-version field must now only be of the form >= x.y
  • Removed deprecated --copy-prefix= feature
  • Auto-reconfigure when .cabal file changes
  • Workaround for haddock overwriting .hi and .o files when using TH
  • Extra cpp flags used with hsc2hs and c2hs (-D${os}_BUILD_OS etc)
  • New cpp define VERSION_ gives string version of dependencies
  • User guide source now in markdown format for easier editing
  • Improved checks and error messages for C libraries and headers
  • Removed BSD4 from the list of suggested licenses
  • Updated list of known language extensions
  • Fix for include paths to allow C code to import FFI stub.h files
  • Fix for intra-package dependencies on OSX
  • Stricter checks on various bits of .cabal file syntax
  • Minor fixes for c2hs

1.8.0.6 Duncan Coutts June 2010

  • Fix register --global/--user

1.8.0.4 Duncan Coutts March 2010

  • Set dylib-install-name for dynalic libs on OSX
  • Stricter configure check that compiler supports a package’s extensions
  • More configure-time warnings
  • Hugs can compile Cabal lib again
  • Default datadir now follows prefix on Windows
  • Support for finding installed packages for hugs
  • Cabal version macros now have proper parenthesis
  • Reverted change to filter out deps of non-buildable components
  • Fix for registering implace when using a specific package db
  • Fix mismatch between $os and $arch path template variables
  • Fix for finding ar.exe on Windows, always pick ghc’s version
  • Fix for intra-package dependencies with ghc-6.12

1.8.0.2 Duncan Coutts December 2009

  • Support for GHC-6.12
  • New unique installed package IDs which use a package hash
  • Allow executables to depend on the lib within the same package
  • Dependencies for each component apply only to that component (previously applied to all the other components too)
  • Added new known license MIT and versioned GPL and LGPL
  • More liberal package version range syntax
  • Package registration files are now UTF8
  • Support for LHC and JHC-0.7.2
  • Deprecated RecordPuns extension in favour of NamedFieldPuns
  • Deprecated PatternSignatures extension in favor of ScopedTypeVariables
  • New VersionRange semantic view as a sequence of intervals
  • Improved package quality checks
  • Minor simplification in a couple Setup.hs hooks
  • Beginnings of a unit level testsuite using QuickCheck
  • Various bug fixes
  • Various internal cleanups

1.6.0.2 Duncan Coutts February 2009

  • New configure-time check for C headers and libraries
  • Added language extensions present in ghc-6.10
  • Added support for NamedFieldPuns extension in ghc-6.8
  • Fix in configure step for ghc-6.6 on Windows
  • Fix warnings in Path_pkgname.hs module on Windows
  • Fix for exotic flags in ld-options field
  • Fix for using pkg-config in a package with a lib and an executable
  • Fix for building haddock docs for exes that use the Paths module
  • Fix for installing header files in subdirectories
  • Fix for the case of building profiling libs but not ordinary libs
  • Fix read-only attribute of installed files on Windows
  • Ignore ghc -threaded flag when profiling in ghc-6.8 and older

1.6.0.1 Duncan Coutts October 2008

  • Export a compat function to help alex and happy

1.6.0.0 Duncan Coutts October 2008

  • Support for ghc-6.10
  • Source control repositories can now be specified in .cabal files
  • Bug report URLs can be now specified in .cabal files
  • Wildcards now allowed in data-files and extra-source-files fields
  • New syntactic sugar for dependencies build-depends: foo ==1.2.*
  • New cabal_macros.h provides macros to test versions of dependencies
  • Relocatable bindists now possible on unix via env vars
  • New exposed field allows packages to be not exposed by default
  • Install dir flags can now use $os and $arch variables
  • New --builddir flag allows multiple builds from a single sources dir
  • cc-options now only apply to .c files, not for -fvia-C
  • cc-options are not longer propagated to dependent packages
  • The cpp/cc/ld-options fields no longer use , as a separator
  • hsc2hs is now called using gcc instead of using ghc as gcc
  • New api for manipulating sets and graphs of packages
  • Internal api improvements and code cleanups
  • Minor improvements to the user guide
  • Miscellaneous minor bug fixes

1.4.0.2 Duncan Coutts August 2008

  • Fix executable stripping default
  • Fix striping exes on OSX that export dynamic symbols (like ghc)
  • Correct the order of arguments given by --prog-options=
  • Fix corner case with overlapping user and global packages
  • Fix for modules that use pre-processing and .hs-boot files
  • Clarify some points in the user guide and readme text
  • Fix verbosity flags passed to sub-command like haddock
  • Fix sdist --snapshot
  • Allow meta-packages that contain no modules or C code
  • Make the generated Paths module -Wall clean on Windows

1.4.0.1 Duncan Coutts June 2008

  • Fix a bug which caused . to always be in the sources search path
  • Haddock-2.2 and later do now support the --hoogle flag

1.4.0.0 Duncan Coutts June 2008

  • Rewritten command line handling support
  • Command line completion with bash
  • Better support for Haddock 2
  • Improved support for nhc98
  • Removed support for ghc-6.2
  • Haddock markup in .lhs files now supported
  • Default colour scheme for highlighted source code
  • Default prefix for --user installs is now $HOME/.cabal
  • All .cabal files are treaded as UTF-8 and must be valid
  • Many checks added for common mistakes
  • New --package-db= option for specific package databases
  • Many internal changes to support cabal-install
  • Stricter parsing for version strings, eg dissalows “1.05”
  • Improved user guide introduction
  • Programatica support removed
  • New options --program-prefix/suffix allows eg versioned programs
  • Support packages that use .hs-boot files
  • Fix sdist for Main modules that require preprocessing
  • New configure -O flag with optimisation level 0–2
  • Provide access to “x-” extension fields through the Cabal api
  • Added check for broken installed packages
  • Added warning about using inconsistent versions of dependencies
  • Strip binary executable files by default with an option to disable
  • New options to add site-specific include and library search paths
  • Lift the restriction that libraries must have exposed-modules
  • Many bugs fixed.
  • Many internal structural improvements and code cleanups

1.2.4.0 Duncan Coutts June 2008

  • Released with GHC 6.8.3
  • Backported several fixes and minor improvements from Cabal-1.4
  • Use a default colour scheme for sources with hscolour >=1.9
  • Support --hyperlink-source for Haddock >= 2.0
  • Fix for running in a non-writable directory
  • Add OSX -framework arguments when linking executables
  • Updates to the user guide
  • Allow build-tools names to include + and _
  • Export autoconfUserHooks and simpleUserHooks
  • Export ccLdOptionsBuildInfo for Setup.hs scripts
  • Export unionBuildInfo and make BuildInfo an instance of Monoid
  • Fix to allow the main-is module to use a pre-processor

1.2.3.0 Duncan Coutts Nov 2007

  • Released with GHC 6.8.2
  • Includes full list of GHC language extensions
  • Fix infamous dist/conftest.c bug
  • Fix configure --interfacedir=
  • Find ld.exe on Windows correctly
  • Export PreProcessor constructor and mkSimplePreProcessor
  • Fix minor bug in unlit code
  • Fix some markup in the haddock docs

1.2.2.0 Duncan Coutts Nov 2007

  • Released with GHC 6.8.1
  • Support haddock-2.0
  • Support building DSOs with GHC
  • Require reconfiguring if the .cabal file has changed
  • Fix os(windows) configuration test
  • Fix building documentation
  • Fix building packages on Solaris
  • Other minor bug fixes

1.2.1 Duncan Coutts Oct 2007

  • To be included in GHC 6.8.1
  • New field cpp-options used when preprocessing Haskell modules
  • Fixes for hsc2hs when using ghc
  • C source code gets compiled with -O2 by default
  • OS aliases, to allow os(windows) rather than requiring os(mingw32)
  • Fix cleaning of stub files
  • Fix cabal-setup, command line ui that replaces runhaskell Setup.hs
  • Build docs even when dependent packages docs are missing
  • Allow the --html-dir to be specified at configure time
  • Fix building with ghc-6.2
  • Other minor bug fixes and build fixes

1.2.0 Duncan Coutts Sept 2007

  • To be included in GHC 6.8.x
  • New configurations feature
  • Can make haddock docs link to hilighted sources (with hscolour)
  • New flag to allow linking to haddock docs on the web
  • Supports pkg-config
  • New field build-tools for tool dependencies
  • Improved c2hs support
  • Preprocessor output no longer clutters source dirs
  • Separate includes and install-includes fields
  • Makefile command to generate makefiles for building libs with GHC
  • New --docdir configure flag
  • Generic --with-prog --prog-args configure flags
  • Better default installation paths on Windows
  • Install paths can be specified relative to each other
  • License files now installed
  • Initial support for NHC (incomplete)
  • Consistent treatment of verbosity
  • Reduced verbosity of configure step by default
  • Improved helpfulness of output messages
  • Help output now clearer and fits in 80 columns
  • New setup register --gen-pkg-config flag for distros
  • Major internal refactoring, hooks api has changed
  • Dozens of bug fixes

1.1.6.2 Duncan Coutts May 2007

  • Released with GHC 6.6.1
  • Handle windows text file encoding for .cabal files
  • Fix compiling a executable for profiling that uses Template Haskell
  • Other minor bug fixes and user guide clarifications

1.1.6.1 Duncan Coutts Oct 2006

  • fix unlit code
  • fix escaping in register.sh

1.1.6 Duncan Coutts Oct 2006

  • Released with GHC 6.6
  • Added support for hoogle
  • Allow profiling and normal builds of libs to be chosen indepentantly
  • Default installation directories on Win32 changed
  • Register haddock docs with ghc-pkg
  • Get haddock to make hyperlinks to dependent package docs
  • Added BangPatterns language extension
  • Various bug fixes

1.1.4 Duncan Coutts May 2006

  • Released with GHC 6.4.2
  • Better support for packages that need to install header files
  • cabal-setup added, but not installed by default yet
  • Implemented setup register --inplace
  • Have packages exposed by default with ghc-6.2
  • It is no longer necessary to run configure before clean or sdist
  • Added support for ghc’s -split-objs
  • Initial support for JHC
  • Ignore extension fields in .cabal files (fields beginning with “x-”)
  • Some changes to command hooks API to improve consistency
  • Hugs support improvements
  • Added GeneralisedNewtypeDeriving language extension
  • Added cabal-version field
  • Support hidden modules with haddock
  • Internal code refactoring
  • More bug fixes

1.1.3 Isaac Jones Sept 2005

  • WARNING: Interfaces not documented in the user’s guide may change in future releases.
  • Move building of GHCi .o libs to the build phase rather than register phase. (from Duncan Coutts)
  • Use .tar.gz for source package extension
  • Uses GHC instead of cpphs if the latter is not available
  • Added experimental “command hooks” which completely override the default behavior of a command.
  • Some bugfixes

1.1.1 Isaac Jones July 2005

  • WARNING: Interfaces not documented in the user’s guide may change in future releases.
  • Handles recursive modules for GHC 6.2 and GHC 6.4.
  • Added setup test command (Used with UserHook)
  • implemented handling of _stub.{c,h,o} files
  • Added support for profiling
  • Changed install prefix of libraries (pref/pkgname-version to prefix/pkgname-version/compname-version)
  • Added pattern guards as a language extension
  • Moved some functionality to Language.Haskell.Extension
  • Register / unregister .bat files for windows
  • Exposed more of the API
  • Added support for the hide-all-packages flag in GHC > 6.4
  • Several bug fixes

1.0 Isaac Jones March 11 2005

  • Released with GHC 6.4, Hugs March 2005, and nhc98 1.18
  • Some sanity checking

0.5 Isaac Jones Wed Feb 19 2005

  • WARNING: this is a pre-release and the interfaces are still likely to change until we reach a 1.0 release.
  • Hooks interfaces changed
  • Added preprocessors to user hooks
  • No more executable-modules or hidden-modules. Use other-modules instead.
  • Certain fields moved into BuildInfo, much refactoring
  • extra-libs -> extra-libraries
  • Added --gen-script to configure and unconfigure.
  • modules-ghc (etc) now ghc-modules (etc)
  • added new fields including synopsis
  • Lots of bug fixes
  • spaces can sometimes be used instead of commas
  • A user manual has appeared (Thanks, ross!)
  • for ghc 6.4, configures versionsed depends properly
  • more features to ./setup haddock

0.4 Isaac Jones Sun Jan 16 2005

  • Much thanks to all the awesome fptools hackers who have been working hard to build the Haskell Cabal!

  • Interface Changes:

    • WARNING: this is a pre-release and the interfaces are still likely to change until we reach a 1.0 release.

    • Instead of Package.description, you should name your description files .cabal. In particular, we suggest that you name it .cabal, but this is not enforced (yet). Multiple .cabal files in the same directory is an error, at least for now.

    • ./setup install --install-prefix is gone. Use ./setup copy --copy-prefix instead.

    • The Modules field is gone. Use hidden-modules, exposed-modules, and executable-modules.

    • Build-depends is now a package-only field, and can’t go into executable stanzas. Build-depends is a package-to-package relationship.

    • Some new fields. Use the Source.

  • New Features

    • Cabal is now included as a package in the CVS version of fptools. That means it’ll be released as -package Cabal in future versions of the compilers, and if you are a bleeding-edge user, you can grab it from the CVS repository with the compilers.

    • Hugs compatibility and NHC98 compatibility should both be improved.

    • Hooks Interface / Autoconf compatibility: Most of the hooks interface is hidden for now, because it’s not finalized. I have exposed only defaultMainWithHooks and defaultUserHooks. This allows you to use a ./configure script to preprocess foo.buildinfo, which gets merged with foo.cabal. In future releases, we’ll expose UserHooks, but we’re definitely going to change the interface to those. The interface to the two functions I’ve exposed should stay the same, though.

    • ./setup haddock is a baby feature which pre-processes the source code with hscpp and runs haddock on it. This is brand new and hardly tested, so you get to knock it around and see what you think.

    • Some commands now actually implement verbosity.

    • The preprocessors have been tested a bit more, and seem to work OK. Please give feedback if you use these.

0.3 Isaac Jones Sun Jan 16 2005

  • Unstable snapshot release
  • From now on, stable releases are even.

0.2 Isaac Jones

  • Adds more HUGS support and preprocessor support.