shake-cabal-build

NOTE: This package is deprecated and unmaintained. These days we use stack in our build script wrappers. Something like:

#!/bin/sh -e
stack build
stack exec -- shakefile-executable "$@"

Build systems written in Shake normally need to be compiled, see the Shake manual for more information. shake is a simple Haskell script that takes care of all the details. Using the Cabal infrastructure, build scripts are compiled on the fly for execution and also be reused as library components.

The only prerequisite for running the script is the latest Haskell platform.

Installation and usage

Copy or link the script to your source folder. You can also install shake-cabal-build from Hackage with cabal install. The executable is called shake-cabal-build in order to avoid a clash with a different executable installed by Shake, you can create an alias with a different name if you want.

Write a file shakefile.hs containing Shake rule definitions and create a file shakefile.cabal with the following contents:

Name: hearhearme-shakefile
Version: 0.1.0
Cabal-Version: >= 1.2
Build-Type: Simple

Executable hearhearme-shakefile
  Main-Is: shakefile.hs
  Ghc-Options: -rtsopts -with-rtsopts=-I0
  Build-Depends:
      base == 4.*
    , shake

If you're using shake-language-c, add it to the dependencies as well. Refer to the Cabal manual for more information about configuration file features. cabal init is another way of creating the Cabal file. It can automatically pick up the dependencies referenced from package imports in your shakefile.hs (if it exists already).

The shake script recognises a number of commands for updating your build system, all of them starting with a . character:

• .update creates a Cabal sandbox and installs your build system script along with the dependencies by executing cabal install with profiling and documentation disabled in order to minimise build times. If needed this behaviour could be made configurable in the future.

• .scrub calls your build script's clean target and removes the Cabal sandbox and all build products.

• .repl loads your build script into ghci by calling cabal repl. This is useful while developing the build script because it is the fastest way to type-check and compile your code. From within ghci you can call

  > :main arg1 arg2 arg3 ...
  

  in order to execute your build script, just as from the command line. Executing

  > :reload
  

  will recompile and reload your code and is very fast compared to cabal install.

Running ./shake with an argument not starting with a . runs your build script with the arguments passed on the command line, usually Shake options and targets to build.

Cabal file extensions

The shake script supports the custom Cabal configuration setting x-shake-package-dirs. It allows to specify Cabal source packages that should be added to the sandbox with cabal add-source, for example:

X-Shake-Package-Dirs:
  external_libraries/methcla/external_libraries/shake
  external_libraries/methcla/external_libraries/shake-language-c
  external_libraries/methcla

Add this setting before the Executable section containing your build script. See here for an example of a production configuration file that also exports a library.