Allow overriding defaultPackageDesc

[bos]

(Imported from Trac #637, reported by guest on 2010-02-19)

I'm trying to keep the source of multiple packages in a single source repository. Unfortunately, I cannot maintain a .cabal file per package, because some commands invoke function defaultPackageDesc unconditionally.

I tried using defaultMainNoRead instead of defaultMain
and passing the desired package name through the environment. This solution doesn't work at all in 1.6.0.3. It works only partially in HEAD: Setup configure and Setup build work but Setup sdist does not because it ignores the readDesc field and invokes defaultPackageDesc unconditionally.

Would it be possible to add a field to UserHooks which would specify the .cabal filename to use? Then defaultPackageDesc should be always called through this field, never directly, and could thus be consistently overridden.

[sethfowler]

Chiming in here to add my support for this request. I recently got bit by the fact that sdist ignores readDesc, which is unfortunate, as it seems like the cleanest approach to programmatically populating fields like extra-source-files.

[thumphries]

This also bit me recently. I was also programmatically populating extra-source-files.

Any command ignoring the readDesc hook is out of line. Note that sdist now does the expected thing ( #3491 ) , though there are other issues such as #3552 to be ironed out.

Long run I would expect our use case to disappear in favour of globstar #3178 , so this issue will be doubly dealt with. I am unsure of the original author's use case, however, so I am hesitant to close this issue.

[jneira]

It seems to me that I'm trying to keep the source of multiple packages in a single source repository. is just what v2 build and cabal.project gives us. Otoh we are trying to reduce the use of custom setups .
The extra-source-filesuse case is also covered as noted above so i am gonna close this.
Feel free to reopen if this is still needed for an use case not took in account